t, for a
conception of the sort of thing the New York of "his time" had been in
his personal life--the New York so unexpectedly, so vividly and, as he
might say, so perversely called back to all his senses by its identity
with that of poor Cornelia's time: since even she had had a time, small
show as it was likely to make now, and his time and hers had been the
same. Cornelia figured to him while he walked away as, by contrast and
opposition, a massive little bundle of data; his impatience to go to see
her sharpened as he thought of this: so certainly should he find out
that wherever he might touch her, with a gentle though firm pressure, he
would, as the fond visitor of old houses taps and fingers a disfeatured,
overpapered wall with the conviction of a wainscot-edge beneath,
recognise some small extrusion of history.

IV

There would have been a wonder for us meanwhile in his continued use, as
it were, of his happy formula--brought out to Cornelia Rasch within ten
minutes, or perhaps only within twenty, of his having settled into the
quite comfortable chair that, two days later, she indicated to him by
her fireside. He had arrived at her address through the fortunate chance
of his having noticed her card, as he went out, deposited, in the good
old New York fashion, on one of the rococo tables of Mrs. Worthingham's
hall. His eye had been caught by the pencilled indication that was to
affect him, the next instant, as fairly placed there for his sake. This
had really been his luck, for he shouldn't have liked to write to Mrs.
Worthingham for guidance--_that_ he felt, though too impatient just
now to analyze the reluctance. There was nobody else he could have
approached for a clue, and with this reflection he was already aware
of how it testified to their rare little position, his and
Cornelia's--position as conscious, ironic, pathetic survivors together
of a dead and buried society--that there would have been, in all the
town, under such stress, not a member of their old circle left to turn
to. Mrs. Worthingham had practically, even if accidentally, helped him
to knowledge; the last nail in the coffin of the poor dear extinct
past had been planted for him by his having thus to reach his antique
contemporary through perforation of the newest newness. The note of this
particular recognition was in fact the more prescribed to him that
the ground of Cornelia's return to a scene swept so bare of the
associational char