THE SENSE OF THE PAST
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."
These words might have struck us as insidious enough just to trip up our young man, but his lucidity was in fact perfectly proof. "I didn't say, kindly understand, that we have merged personalities, but that we have definitely exchanged them—which is a different matter. Our duality is so far from diminished that it's only the greater—by our formulation, each to the other, of the so marked difference in our interest. The man ridden by his curiosity about the Past can't, you'll grasp, be one and the same with the man ridden by his curiosity about the Future. He has given me his chance for this, while I have given him mine for that. Recognise accordingly," said Ralph, "that
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