"Yes—yes—of course. But you knew me years ago when I was a boy.
Don't you remember Robert Stonehouse?"
It was evident that the name fanned some faint memory which flickered up for a moment and then went out.
"You will excuse me. It is possible. I have heard the name. But I have long since ceased to concern myself with persons. In a great struggle such as this individuals are submerged."
He walked on again, slip-slopping in his shapeless boots through the slush, his head down to the rain.
"Christine," Robert said, "don't you remember Christine?"
(He himself had not thought of her for years, and now deliberately he had conjured her up.)
Mr. Ricardo hunched his shoulders. He peered round at Stonehouse, frowning suspiciously.
"You are very persistent, sir. Are you God?"
"No."
"It is better to be quite frank with one another. Not an emissary of
God?"