nied that this person's actual footsteps may have imperceptibly
been drawn somewhat aside from the path of his former design. Yet
inasmuch as it is truly said that the body is in all things subservient
to the mind, and is led withersoever it is willed, and as your engaging
directions were scrupulously observed with undeviating fidelity, it
would be impertinently self-opinionated on this person's part to
imply that they failed to guide him to his destination. Thus, for all
ceremonial purposes, it is permissible conscientiously to assume that he
HAS been there."

"I am afraid that I must not have been sufficiently clear," said Sir
Philip. "Did you miss the train at King's Cross?"

"By no means," I replied firmly, pained inwardly that he should cast the
shadow of such narrow incompetence upon me. "Seeing this machine on the
point of setting forth on a journey, even as your overwhelming
sagacity had enabled you to predict would be the case, I embarked with
self-reliant confidence."

"Good lord!" murmured the person opposite, beginning to manifest an
excess of emotion for which I was quite unable to account. "Then you
have been in this train--your actual footsteps I mean, Mr. Kong; not
your ceremonial abstract subliminal ego--ever since?"

To this I replied that his words shone like the moon at midnight with
scintillating points of truth; adding, however, as the courtesies of
the occasion required, that I had been so impressed with the many-sided
brilliance of his conversation earlier in the day as to render the
flight of time practically unnoticed by me.

"But did it never occur to you to ask at one of the stations?" he
demanded, still continuing to wave his hands incapably from side to
side. "Any of the porters would have told you."

"Kong Li Heng, the founder of our line, who was really great, has been
dead eleven centuries, and no single fact or incident connected with his
life has been preserved to influence mankind," I replied. "How much less
will it matter, then, even in so limited a space of time as a hundred
years, in what fashion so insignificant a person as the one before you
acted on any occasion, and why, therefore, should he distress himself
unnecessarily to any precise end?" In this manner I sought to place
before him the dignified example of an imperturbability which can be
maintained in every emergency, and at the same time to administer a
plain yet scrupulously-sheathed rebuke; for the inauspicious ma