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In the pause the Editor had changed his attitude, faced his desk, and smiled a faint knowing smile.

“Striking girl–eh?” he said.

The incongruity of the word was enough to make one jump out of the chair. Striking! That girl striking! Stri . . .! But Renouard restrained his feelings. His friend was not a person to give oneself away to. And, after all, this sort of speech was what he had come there to hear. As, however, he had made a movement he re- settled himself comfortably and said, with very creditable indifference, that yes–she was, rather. Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps. There wasn’t one woman under forty there.

“Is that the way to speak of the cream of our society; the ‘top of the basket,’ as the French say,” the Editor remonstrated with mock indignation. “You aren’t moderate in your expressions–you know.”

“I express myself very little,” interjected Renouard seriously.

“I will tell you what you are. You are a fellow that doesn’t count the cost. Of course you are safe with me, but will you never learn. . . .”

“What struck me most,” interrupted the other, “is that she should pick me out for such a long conversation.”

“That’s perhaps because you were the most remarkable of the men there.”

Renouard shook his head.

“This shot doesn’t seem to me to hit the mark,” he said calmly. “Try again.”

“Don’t you believe me? Oh, you modest creature. Well, let me assure you that under ordinary circumstances it would have been a good shot. You are sufficiently remarkable. But you seem a pretty acute customer too. The circumstances are extraordinary. By Jove they are!”

He mused. After a time the Planter of Malata dropped a negligent –

“And you know them.”

“And I know them,” assented the all-knowing Editor, soberly, as though the occasion were too special for a display of professional vanity; a vanity so well known to Renouard that its absence augmented his wonder and almost made him uneasy as if portending bad news of some sort.

“You have met those people?” he asked.

“No. I was to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to Willie in the morning. It was then that he had the bright idea to invite you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use. Willie is stupid sometimes. For it is clear that you are the last man able to help.”

“How on earth do I come to be mixed up in this–whatever it is?” Renouard’s voice was slightly altered by nervous irritation. “I only arrived here yesterday morning.”

CHAPTER II

His friend the Editor turned to him squarely. “Willie took me into consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as well tell you what is up. I shall try to be as short as I can. But in confidence–mind!”

He waited. Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably, assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning. Professor Moorsom–physicist and philosopher–fine head of white hair, to judge from the photographs–plenty of brains in the head too–all these famous books–surely even Renouard would know. . . .

Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn’t his sort of reading, and his friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his sort–except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary page of that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his life). The only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not ignore the fashionable philosopher of the age. Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antipodes, but everybody had heard of him– women, children, dock labourers, cabmen. The only person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he knew, was old Dunster, who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it Moorsomite) years and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself up into the great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too. Quite the fashion in the highest world.