That was exciting again—especially since he went on to say that, if you did do that subtle and monstrous thing, you would definitely find what you had been looking for. It would be there, in some circumstance of your real life. (So Isabel had come from his real life?) But it became clear that he was speaking only theoretically: in practical terms he thought that that kind of reconstruction or excavation was impossible, or somehow not worth trying, or not worth thinking about.
