“I’ve sometimes thought I should like to go there.”... He had thought it not two minutes ago for the first time—but it seemed to him now that he had always intended to go—that it was something he had been moving toward all his life.
The other nodded. “You won’t regret it. I mean to go back myself, some time.”
They parted with a kind of friendliness they would not have expected from their previous knowledge of each other. Richard had in his pocket such directions as the man could give him.
“I can’t tell you precisely where the place is, nor how to get to it. I never knew, myself.... And it’s a country you have to find your own way in. Go slow and trust ’em. Don’t hurry them too much.... I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d find the coat—if there really was one, like the one we knew—I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d find it just where it was twenty years ago when they told me about it. They’re a slow-moving people! But they’ve found out some things... some things we don’t know yet.... In a sense they’ve forgotten more than we ever knew,” he added with a smile.
“Here, wait a minute!” He went to a cabinet across the room and took from a pigeonhole a yellow and discolored map. He brought it to the table and spread it out.
“Here is the region I spoke of—up here.... And these red lines show where I have been myself; and the little blue crosses are places where I got information—the right sort—where people are friendly and intelligent... they will not have changed much—” He looked at the map thoughtfully and took it up and folded it in slow fingers.
“I am going to give you this. It may be useful to you, and I may not go myself—I am an old man now.”
So Richard More took the map and went out. He had come expecting to make a business inquiry, in a businesslike way; and he had encountered something that was not business—something that the piece of worn and discolored paper seemed vaguely to whisper as it rustled in his pocket.