humbug!" St. George added in a tone that confirmed our young man's
ease.

"Certainly I'll break it - but it was a real promise."
"Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You're following her?" his friend

asked.
He answered by a question. "Oh is SHE going?"

"Base impostor!" his ironic host went on. "I've treated you
handsomely on the article of that young lady: I won't make another

concession. Wait three minutes - I'll be with you." He gave
himself to his departing guests, accompanied the long-trained

ladies to the door. It was a hot night, the windows were open, the
sound of the quick carriages and of the linkmen's call came into

the house. The affair had rather glittered; a sense of festal
things was in the heavy air: not only the influence of that

particular entertainment, but the suggestion of the wide hurry of
pleasure which in London on summer nights fills so many of the

happier quarters of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St.
George's drawing-room emptied itself; Paul was left alone with his

hostess, to whom he explained the motive of his waiting. "Ah yes,
some intellectual, some PROFESSIONAL, talk," she leered; "at this

season doesn't one miss it? Poor dear Henry, I'm so glad!" The
young man looked out of the window a moment, at the called hansoms

that lurched up, at the smooth broughams that rolled away. When he
turned round Mrs. St. George had disappeared; her husband's voice

rose to him from below - he was laughing and talking, in the
portico, with some lady who awaited her carriage. Paul had

solitary possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted rooms
where the covered tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had been

pushed about and the odour of flowers lingered. They were large,
they were pretty, they contained objects of value; everything in

the picture told of a "good house." At the end of five minutes a
servant came in with a request from the Master that he would join

him downstairs; upon which, descending, he followed his conductor
through a long passage to an apartment thrown out, in the rear of

the habitation, for the special requirements, as he guessed, of a
busy man of letters.

St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large high
room - a room without windows, but with a wide skylight at the top,

that of a place of exhibition. It was furnished as a library, and
the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, a surface of

incomparable tone produced by dimly-gilt "backs" interrupted here
and there by the suspension of old prints and drawings. At the end

furthest from the door of admission was a tall desk, of great
extent, at which the person using it could write only in the erect

posture of a clerk in a counting-house; and stretched from the
entrance to this structure was a wide plain band of crimson cloth,

as straight as a garden-path and almost as long, where, in his
mind's eye, Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during

vexed hours - hours, that is, of admirablecomposition. The
servant gave him a coat, an old jacket with a hang of experience,

from a cupboard in the wall, retiring afterwards with the garment
he had taken off. Paul Overt welcomed the coat; it was a coat for

talk, it promised confidences - having visibly received so many -
and had tragicliterary elbows. "Ah we're practical - we're

practical!" St. George said as he saw his visitor look the place
over. "Isn't it a good big cage for going round and round? My

wife invented it and she locks me up here every morning."
Our young man breathed - by way of tribute - with a certain

oppression. "You don't miss a window - a place to look out?"
"I did at first awfully; but her calculation was just. It saves

time, it has saved me many months in these ten years. Here I
stand, under the eye of day - in London of course, very often, it's

rather a bleared old eye - walled in to my trade. I can't get away
- so the room's a fine lesson in concentration. I've learnt the

lesson, I think; look at that big bundle of proof and acknowledge
it." He pointed to a fat roll of papers, on one of the tables,

which had not been undone.
"Are you bringing out another -?" Paul asked in a tone the fond

deficiencies of which he didn't recognise till his companion burst
out laughing, and indeed scarce even then.

"You humbug, you humbug!" - St. George appeared to enjoy caressing
him, as it were, with that opprobrium. "Don't I know what you

think of them?" he asked, standing there with his hands in his
pockets and with a new kind of smile. It was as if he were going

to let his young votary see him all now.
"Upon my word in that case you know more than I do!" the latter

ventured to respond, revealing a part of the torment of being able
neither clearly to esteem nor distinctly to renounce him.

"My dear fellow," said the more and more interesting Master, "don't
imagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decent

subject - il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you may
apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it

wasn't for that I brought you down here. I want to ask you
something - very much indeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit

down. We're practical, but there IS a sofa, you see - for she does
humour my poor bones so far. Like all really great administrators

and disciplinarians she knows when wisely to relax." Paul sank
into the corner of a deep leathern couch, but his friend remained

standing and explanatory. "If you don't mind, in this room, this
is my habit. From the door to the desk and from the desk to the

door. That shakes up my imaginationgently; and don't you see what
a good thing it is that there's no window for her to fly out of?

The eternalstanding as I write (I stop at that bureau and put it
down, when anything comes, and so we go on) was rather wearisome at

first, but we adopted it with an eye to the long run; you're in
better order - if your legs don't break down! - and you can keep it

up for more years. Oh we're practical - we're practical!" St.
George repeated, going to the table and taking up all mechanically

the bundle of proofs. But, pulling off the wrapper, he had a
change of attention that appealed afresh to our hero. He lost

himself a moment, examining the sheets of his new book, while the
younger man's eyes wandered over the room again.

"Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a charming place
as this to do them in!" Paul reflected. The outer world, the world

of accident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within
the rich protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the dream-

figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular revel.
It was a fond prevision of Overt's rather than an observation on

actual data, for which occasions had been too few, that the Master
thus more closely viewed would have the quality, the charming gift,

of flashing out, all surprisingly, in personal intercourse and at
moments of suspended or perhaps even of diminished expectation. A

happy relation with him would be a thing proceeding by jumps, not
by traceable stages.

"Do you read them - really?" he asked, laying down the proofs on
Paul's enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And

when the young man answered "Oh yes, always," he was moved to mirth
again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go

to see your grandmother on her birthday - and very proper it is,
especially as she won't last for ever. She has lost every faculty

and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all
customary pieties and kindly habits are respectable. Only you're

strong if you DO read 'em! I couldn't, my dear fellow. You are
strong, I know; and that's just a part of what I wanted to say to

you. You're very strong indeed. I've been going into your other
things - they've interested me immensely. Some one ought to have

told me about them before - some one I could believe. But whom can
one believe? You're wonderfully on the right road - it's awfully