hom Philip had been talking.
"Why don't you come and join us, too? We'll have a rubber of bridge
afterwards."

"That's great," the other declared. "Come on, Ware. We'll rag old
Honeybrook into telling us some of his stories."

The little party gathered together at the end of the common table. Philip
had already drunk much more than he was accustomed to, but the only
result appeared to be some slight slackening of the tension in which he
had been living. His eyes flashed, and his tongue became more nimble. He
insisted upon ordering wine. He had had no opportunity yet of repaying
many courtesies. They drank his health, forced him into the place of
honour by the side of Honeybrook, veteran of the club, and ate their meal
to the accompaniment of ceaseless bursts of laughter, chaff, the popping
of corks, mock speeches, badinage of every sort. Philip felt, somehow,
that his brain had never been clearer. He not only held his own, but he
earned a reputation for a sense of humour previously denied to him. And
in the midst of it all the door opened and closed, and a huge man,
dressed in plain dinner clothes, still wearing his theatre hat, with a
coat upon his arm and a stick in his hand, passed through the door and
stood for a moment gazing around him.

"Say, that's Sylvanus Power!" one of the young men at the table
exclaimed. "Looks a trifle grim, doesn't he?"

"It's the old man, right enough," Noel Bridges murmured. "Wonder what he
wants down here? It isn't in his beat?"

Honeybrook, the great New York raconteur, father of the club, touched
Philip upon the shoulder.

"Hey, presto!" he whispered. "We who think so much of ourselves have
become pigmies upon the face of the earth. There towers the
representative of modern omnipotence. Those are the hands--grim,
strong-looking hands, aren't they?--that grip the levers of modern
American life. Rodin ought to do a statue of him as he stands there--art
and letters growing smaller as he grows larger. We exist for him. He
builds theatres for our plays, museums for our pictures, libraries for
our books."

"Seems to me he is looking for one of us," Noel Bridges remarked.

"Some pose, isn't it!" a younger member of the party exclaimed
reverently, as he lifted his tankard.

All these things were a matter of seconds, during which Sylvanus Power
did indeed stand without moving, looking closely about the room. Then his
eye at last lit upon the end of the table where Philip and his fr