This time he
was going to the far East in the train of a "special mission," and
his head was humming with new hopes and ardors; but he had time for
a last word with me about Ambrose.
"You'll see--you'll see!" he summed up hopefully as we parted; and
what I was to see was, of course, the crowning pinnacle of the
Academy lifting itself against the horizon of the immediate future.
It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less
than formerly of the projector of that unrealized structure. Paul
had a personal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to
the world, and I was not often a spectator on these occasions. Paul
indeed, good fellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken
intercourse, and to this end I was asked to dine now and then; but
when I went I found guests of a new type, who, after dinner, talked
of sport and stocks, while their host blinked at them silently
through the smoke of his cheap cigars.
The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in the
quality of the cigars.
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