His nerves, though he did not
know it, and would have scorned the imputation, were slowly giving
way. Hence, really, the danger to the pane! Through the pane, in the
dying light, he could see a cross-section of Shaftesbury Avenue, and
an aged newspaper-lad leaning against a lamp-post and displaying a
poster which spoke of Isabel Joy. Isabel Joy yet again! That
little fact of itself contributed to his exasperation. He thought,
considering the importance of the Regent Theatre and the salary he was
paying to his press-agent, that the newspapers ought to occupy their
pages solely with the metropolitan affairs of Edward Henry Machin. But
the wretched Isabel had, as it were, got London by the throat. She
had reached Chicago from the West, on her triumphant way home, and
had there contrived to be arrested, according to boast, but she was
experiencing much more difficulty in emerging from the Chicago prison
than in entering it. And the question was now becoming acute whether
the emissary of the Militant Suffragettes would arrive back in London
within the specified period of a hundred days. Naturally, London was
holding its breath. London will keep calm during moderate crises--such
as a national strike or the agony of the House of Lords--but when the
supreme excitation is achieved London knows how to let itself go.

"If you please, Mr. Machin--"

He turned. It was his typewriter, Miss Lindop, a young girl of some
thirty-five years, holding a tea-tray.

"But I've had my tea once!" he snapped.

"But you've not had your dinner, sir, and it's half-past eight!" she
pleaded.

He had known this girl for less than a month, and he paid her fewer
shillings a week than the years of her age--and yet somehow she had
assumed a worshipping charge of him, based on the idea that he was
incapable of taking care of himself. To look at her appealing eyes one
might have thought that she would have died to ensure his welfare.

"And they want to see you about the linoleum for the gallery stairs,"
she added timidly. "The County Council man says it must be taken up."

The linoleum for the gallery stairs! Something snapped in him. He
almost walked right through the young woman and the tea-tray.

"I'll linoleum them!" he bitterly exclaimed, and disappeared.

II

Having duly "linoleumed them," or rather having very annoyingly quite
failed to "linoleum them," Edward Henry continued his way up the
right-hand gallery staircase, and reached t