I knew where I had failed, but it was exactly where I couldn't have succeeded.
I had been sent down to be personal and then in point of fact hadn't been personal at all: what I had dispatched to London was just a little finicking feverish study of my author's talent.

Anything less relevant to Mr.Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket) approached the subject of our enterprise only to stand off so helplessly.
For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and how a miracle--as pretty as some old miracle of legend--had been wrought on the spot to save me.

There had been a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline robe, and then, with a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and caught me to his bosom.

He held me only till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute.

With my manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart.