'I am. That's why I know. Don't be an ass, Keller. Remember, I'm
seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may
learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about
five hundred years ago. You won't do it, because you can't.'

This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems
possible, some hundred miles from Southampton. We passed the Needles
Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the
green and the awful orderliness of England--line upon line, wall upon
wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier. We waited an hour in the
Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in.

'Now, Keller, you face the music. The _Havel_ goes out to-day. Mail
by her, and I'll take you to the telegraph-office,' I said.

I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him,
cowing him as they say Newmarket Heath cows a young horse unused to
open courses.

'I want to retouch my stuff. Suppose we wait till we get to London?'
he said.

Zuyland, by the way, had torn up his account and thrown it overboard
that morning early. His reasons were my reasons.

In the train Keller began to revise his copy, and every time that he
looked at the trim little fields, the red villas, and the embankments
of the line, the blue pencil plunged remorselessly through the slips.
He appeared to have dredged the dictionary for adjectives. I could
think of none that he had not used. Yet he was a perfectly sound