THE   AMBASSADORS
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
more in it than meets the eye."   He gave the rein to his fancy.
"It's a plant!"
His fancy seemed to please her.   " Whose then ?"
"Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits
for one, the dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such
elements one can't count. I've but my poor individual, my modest
human, means. It isn't playing the game to turn on the uncanny.
All one's energy goes to facing it, to tracking it. One wants, con-
found it, don't you see ?" he confessed with a queer f ace—" one
wants to enjoy anything so rare. Call it then life "—he puzzled it
out—" call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise.
Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralyzing, or at any
rate engrossing—all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that one can
see."
Her silences were never dull. "Is that what you've written
home?"
He tossed it off.   " Oh dear, yes !"
She had another pause while, over her carpets, he had another
walk.   " If you don't look out you'll have them straight over."
" Oh, but I've said he'll go back."
" And will he ?" Miss Gostrey asked.
The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long.
" What's that but just the question I've spent treasures of patience
and ingenuity in giving you, by the sight of him—after everything
had led up—every facility to answer ? What is it but just the thing
I came here to-day to get out of you ?   Will he ?"
" No—he won't," she said at last.   " He's not free."
The air of it held him.   " Then you've all the while known— ?"
" I've known nothing but what I've seen ; and I wonder," she de-
clared with some impatience, " that you didn't see as much. It was
enough to be with him there—"
" In the box ?   Yes," he rather blankly urged.
" Well—to feel sure."
"Sure of what?"
She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than
she had ever yet shown to dismay at his dimness. She even, fairly
pausing for it, spoke with a shade of pity.   " Guess !"
It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that,
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