"Well," she said at last, "this is all very well, but it isn't getting us much forrader. Of course he may be thirty-five still. In that case I suppose you'll carry on as you are doing. But let's suppose for a moment he's back at thirty-three. I'm afraid that'll mean a good deal of work for you, George. You've got to start on an entirely new set of places. Let me see, what year would that be? Yes, 1908. Where was he mostly in 1908?"
"Oh, he was never there very much really. I dare say he only came at all because it was near and he'd drawn a blank somewhere else; he lived in Paulton's Square, you know. No, you'd have to look for him in the British Museum Reading Room, or the lobby of the House of Commons, or wherever the Blue Books are kept, or some other place where he'd be digging out all that terrible _Vicarage_ stuff. Or if it happened to be a Thursday night you might try the Eyre Arms; he used to go up there to the Belsize Boxing Club. Cheer up, George. I'm only showing you what you've let yourself in for."
"Well, it's no good looking for him in the fourth dimension. He's got to be in some sort of a place. And I admit that I was a fool, and that you found him simply by sitting in Mrs Bassett's pocket."
"I didn't do that at all," she remarked composedly.
"Then I'm afraid I haven't understood you."
"Then let me tell you. I didn't sit in Daphne Bassett's pocket. I sat in Daphne Wade's."
I stared at her. Was she suggesting that while she herself had loved him since childhood, he for his part had loved Daphne Wade?
"Surely you're wrong there. If there was ever anything between her and him I'm no judge of men."
"There may not have 'been anything.' But there was everything for all that," she replied.
"That's merely enigmatic. Never mind 'everything.' Tell me what thing."
"All his dreams and ideals when he was a boy," she answered promptly. "Isn't that everything in a man like him--the everything he's on his way back to?"
"But he never loved her in the least, nor she him, as far as I'm aware."
"That I shall _never_ forgive her.... Don't you know yet why he never knew anything about real women? It was simply because he was too wrapped up in his dreams. He was so full of them that he couldn't see anything truly for them. And now I'm afraid I'm going to dispel one of your most cherished illusions, George. Do you know why his dreams all settled on Daphne Wade? Oh, it had nothing to do with loving her!... It was simply because she had that coloured hair. It _was_ rather like an aureole when she was a child. And her eyes _were_ blue. In fact she'd all the conventional angelic appliances except the wings, and he supplied those. She'd nothing whatever else--little fool."