In the end, his long lost love is sitting there, in the village, reading the letter that he never was able to deliver as the black baldy stallion rider passes, gleaming in the sun, dripping water from the river.
You tour it in the cab from the airport, passing the gleaming new English-language Nazarbayev University and then the new soccer stadium, speed-skating track, and ten-thousand-seat velodrome.
Here we'd pass a gleaming ski boat, there a half-buried shanty.
You'll also pass the gleaming Roche Tower jetting diagonally into the sky like an optimistic sales forecast.
It was snowing, as if scripted, and we clip-clopped down past lit chalets, intermittently passed by gleaming Mercedes and BMW sedans.
Every evening a polymorphic parade of Upper West Siders passes the gleaming zinc bar up front into the sleek tile dining room with its period sconces, Parisian cafe chairs and red banquettes.
The beginning of the journey offers spectacular views of Tower Bridge; along the way boats pass the gleaming skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, London's second financial district.
Arriving between 8 and 9 p.m., guests sampled hors d'oeuvres, passed on gleaming silver trays by white-gloved dining room staff.
So he asks a couple of passing Americans in a gleaming white aid agency vehicle for a ride.
The oohing and aahing begin in earnest at Table Rock, where the stream bed widens into a broad expanse of flat granite, with the water passing over it in a gleaming, paper-thin sheet.
Bicycling down the Fulham Road a short while ago, Bagehot was passed by a gleaming Aston Martin, twin exhausts rumbling like a freight train, and French number plates (33 code, so from Bordeaux, at a guess).
