The Ambassador was on his feet at this, with an effect of interruption, as by the very quickness of his apprehension. "His sense of the present!" he triumphantly smiled.
But his visitor's smile reduced that felicity. "His sense of the future, don't you see?--which had at last declined to let him rest, just as my corresponding expression had declined to let me. Only after his being worried," Ralph's scruple explained, "nearly a century longer."
"A century's a long time to be worried!" the Ambassador remarked through his smoke, but permitting himself this time a confession of amusement.
"Oh a terrible time of course--but all leading up, you see, to this tremendous relief I've brought him. I've brought him, I've given him, I've introduced him to, the Future. So there we are!" Ralph gloried.
His companion, though visibly impressed, appeared a little to wonder where indeed they were. Then this wonder found voice. "How could you bring him what you didn't have yourself?"
Ralph needed but a moment to consider. "Why, I _am_ the Future. The Future, that is, for _him_; which means the Present, don't you see----?"
"The Present, I see, for _me!_" his host, fairly flushed with divination, broke in.
"Yes," Ralph promptly returned, "nothing could do more beautifully than your Present, not to say, literally, your presence, for the Future he has waited so long, poor dear chap, to know about."
"What it comes to then," the Ambassador considered in all apparent sympathy--"what it comes to in fine," this functionary smoked, "is that I and my contemporaries _are_ his Future."
Ralph accepted the conclusion. "It would come to that if he could get into relation with you."
It might have been by reason of something conveyed in his visitor's tone that the Ambassador said: "With me in particular you mean?"
Ralph met it handsomely. "Ah I could wish nothing better for him than you!"
Ralph kept his eyes kindly on his country's representative. "Yes, since I find you so remarkably good for myself."
The Ambassador acknowledged the tribute, yet couldn't but formulate after all a certain inward confusion. "I'm only puzzled by your not having spoken to me of your friend and yourself a moment ago as separate persons--but on the contrary of your having arrived, wasn't it? at some common identity or wonderful unity. You _are_ the other fellow, you said, didn't you?--and the other fellow, by the same stroke, is you. So that when I wonder where the other fellow is," he genially pursued, "it would seem that I've only to suppose him here in this room with me, in your interesting person."