What is a submarine like," she wanted to know; "were you ever on one ?" "Never, excepting a number of times," replied St.George, supremely unconscious of any vagueness.

He was rapidly losing count of all events up to the present.

He was concerned only with these things: that she was here with him, that the time might be measured by minutes until she would be caught away to undergo neither knew what perils, and that at any minute Mrs.Hastings might escape from the chemist's.
Although the commonplace is no respecter of enchantments, it was quite fifteen minutes before the sword fell and Mrs.Hastings did make the moment her prey, as pinkly excited as though her drawing-room had been untenanted.

And in the meantime no one knows what pleasantly absurd thing St.George longed to say, it is so perilous when one is sailing away to Yaque and another stands upon the shore for a word of farewell.

But, indeed, if it were not for the soberest moments of farewell, journeys and their returns would become very tame affairs.