ays raise a bit, and I think your word's all right.
I tell you this, on my honour. Only yesterday 'the chief' asked for
the proof of your story himself. It was down to appear without fail
this next week. We've very few manuscripts in hand--never had
fewer--and they've been so short of good fiction. What's gone wrong I
don't know, but you leave it to me and I'll find out. You'll let me
hear from you, eh?"

Douglas nodded drearily.

"Thanks," he said. "I won't forget."

He walked away briskly enough, but without any definite idea as to his
destination. Rice returned to his room and smoked a whole cigarette
before he touched his work.

CHAPTER X

A WOMAN OF WHIMS

Drexley had found his way to her side at last. As usual her rooms were
full, and to-night of people amongst whom he felt himself to some extent
an alien. For Drexley was not of the fashionable world--not even of the
fashionable literary world. At heart he was a Bohemian of the old type.
He loved to spend his days at work, and his evenings at a certain
well-known club, where evening dress was abhorred, and a man might sit,
if he would, in his shirt sleeves. Illimitable though her tact, even
Emily de Reuss, the Queen of London hostesses, never succeeded in making
him feel altogether at home in her magnificent rooms. To-night he felt
more at sea even than usual. Generally she had bidden him come to her
when she entertained the great cosmopolitan world of art-toilers.
To-night she was at home to another world--the strictly exclusive world
of rank and fashion. Drexley wandering about, seeing never a face he
knew, felt ill at ease, conscious of his own deficiency in dress and
deportment, in a world where form was the one material thing, and a
studhole shirt or an ill-cut waistcoat were easy means of acquiring
notoriety. He wandered from room to room, finding nowhere any one to
speak to, conscious of a good deal of indifferent scrutiny, hating
himself for coming, hating, too, the bondage which had made him glad to
come. Then suddenly he came face to face with his hostess, and with a
few graceful words of apology she had left her escort and taken his arm.

"I am afraid you are being bored," she said, quietly. "I am sorry. I
only remembered that people were coming to-night. Janette was out, and
I had quite forgotten who had had cards. I wanted to see you, too."

"I am a little out of place here," he answered. "That is all. Now that
I have seen you, you can e