own here," he went on, when he had reached his
own room.

It was a palatial apartment furnished in white and gold--Louis Quinze,
or something of the sort--with very new decorations after Watteau
covering the walls. The process of disfiguration, however, had already
begun. A roll desk of the least possible Louis Quinze order stood in one
of the tall windows; the carpet was marked by muddy footprints, and a
matchboard screen had been run across one end of the room.

"Hullo, Evans," Fox shouted across it, "just see that man from Grant's,
will you? Heard from the Central News yet?"

He was looking through the papers on the desk.

"Not yet, I've just rung them up for the fifth time," the answer came.

"Keep on at it," Fox exhorted.

"Here's Churchill's letter," he said to me. "Have an arm-chair; those
blasted things are too uncomfortable for anything. Make yourself
comfortable. I'll be back in a minute."

I took an arm-chair and addressed myself to the Foreign Minister's
letter. It expressed bored tolerance of a potential interviewer, but it
seemed to please Fox. He ran into the room, snatched up a paper from his
desk, and ran out again.

"Read Churchill's letter?" he asked, in passing. "I'll tell you all
about it in a minute." I don't know what he expected me to do with
it--kiss the postage stamp, perhaps.

At the same time, it was pleasant to sit there idle in the midst of the
hurry, the breathlessness. I seemed to be at last in contact with real
life, with the life that matters. I was somebody, too. Fox treated me
with a kind of deference--as if I were a great unknown. His "you
literary men" was pleasing. It was the homage that the pretender pays to
the legitimate prince; the recognition due to the real thing from the
machine-made imitation; the homage of the builder to the architect.

"Ah, yes," it seemed to say, "we jobbing men run up our rows and rows of
houses; build whole towns and fill the papers for years. But when we
want something special--something monumental--we have to come to you."

Fox came in again.

"Very sorry, my dear fellow, find I can't possibly get a moment for a
chat with you. Look here, come and dine with me at the Paragraph round
the corner--to-night at six sharp. You'll go to Churchill's to-morrow."

The Paragraph Club, where I was to meet Fox, was one of those sporadic
establishments that spring up in the neighbourhood of the Strand. It is
one of their qualities that they are alway