"I never know what you mean," she said almost wistfully.

"Neither do I," was his amiable response. "And I am sure it would
not be worth while going into. Really, we neither of us know what
we mean. Perhaps I am as wicked as I know how to be. And I may
have painful limitations--or I may not."

After his father's death he spent rather more time in London and
rather less in wandering over the face of the globe. But by the
time he was forty he knew familiarly far countries and near and
was intimate with most of the peoples thereof. He could have found
his way about blind-folded in the most distinctive parts of most
of the great cities. He had seen and learned many things. The
most absorbing to his mind had been the ambitions and changes of
nations, statesmen, rulers and those they ruled or were ruled by.
Courts and capitals knew him, and his opportunities were such as
gave him all ease as an onlooker. He was outwardly of the type
which does not arouse caution in talkers and he heard much which
was suggestive even to illumination, from those to whom he remained
unsuspected of being a man who remembered things long and was
astute in drawing conclusions. The fact remained however that
he possessed a remarkable memory and one which was not a rag-bag
filled with unassorted and parti-coloured remnants, but a large and
orderly space whose contents were catalogued and filed and well
enclosed from observation. He was also given to the mental argument
which follows a point to its conclusion as a mere habit of mind.
He saw and knew well those who sat and pondered with knit brows and
cautiously hovering hand at the great chess-board which is formed
by the Map of Europe. He found an enormous interest in watching