certainly; or rather would be quite
naturally and handsomely possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and
would always have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet wouldn't
have wrecked him. It was immeasurable, the opportunity to do a man of
imagination, for if there mightn't be a chance to bite, where in the world might
it be? This personage of course, so enriched, wouldn't give me, for his type,
imagination in predominance or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in view of
other matters, have found that convenient. So particular a luxury - some
occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in supreme command of a case or of
a career - would still doubtless come on the day I should be ready to pay for
it; and till then might, as from far back, remain hung up well in view and just
out of reach. The comparative case meanwhile would serve - it was only on the
minor scale that I had treated myself even to comparative cases.
    I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale had
thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of the full range
of the major; since most immediately to the point was the question of that
supplement of situation logically involved in our gentleman's impulse to deliver
himself in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon - or if not involved by
strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly implied in it. (I say ideally,
because I need scarce mention that for development, for expression of its
maximum, my glimmering story was, at the earliest stage, to have nipped the
thread of connexion with the possibilities of the actual reported speaker. He
remains but the happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too definite,
precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his charming office to
project upon that wide field of the artist's vision - which hangs there ever in
place like the white sheet suspended for the figures of a child's magic-lantern
- a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of
tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense
and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this
business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by
the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand.
No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds and the rag