are in your eyes. Opals, I suppose, from the way they change
colour. They shine uncommonly to-day, I never remember them so bright.
I----"

At this moment a knock came on the door. Sir Robert turned off the lamp
and walked back to the fireplace.

"Come in," he said, and as he spoke once more his pale face grew
impassive and expressionless.

The door opened and a clerk entered, an imposing-looking clerk with
iron-grey hair, who wore an irreproachable frock coat and patent leather
boots. Advancing to his master, he stood respectfully silent, waiting to
be addressed. For quite a long while Sir Robert looked over his head as
though he did not see him; it was a way of his. Then his eyes rested on
the man dreamily and he remarked in his cold, clear voice:

"I don't think I rang, Jeffreys."

"No, Sir Robert," answered the clerk, bowing as though he spoke to
Royalty, "but there is a little matter about that article in _The
Cynic_."

"Press business," said Sir Robert, lifting his eyebrows; "you should
know by this time that I do not attend to such details. See Mr.
Champers-Haswell, or Major Vernon."

"They are both out at the moment, Sir Robert."

"Go on, then, Jeffreys," replied the head of the firm with a resigned
sigh, "only be brief. I am thinking."

The clerk bowed again.

"The _Cynic_ people have just telephoned through about that article we
sent them. I think you saw it, sir, and you may remember it begins----"
and he read from a typewritten copy in his hand which was headed "Sahara
Limited":

"'We are now privileged to announce that this mighty scheme which will
turn a desert into a rolling sea bearing the commerce of nations and
cause the waste places of the earth to teem with population and to
blossom like the rose, has been completed in its necessary if dull
financial details and will within a few days be submitted to investors
among whom it has already caused so much excitement. These details we
will deal with fully in succeeding articles, and therefore now need only
pause to say that the basis of capitalization strikes us as wonderfully
advantageous to the fortunate public who are asked to participate in
its vast prospective prosperity. Our present object is to speak of its
national and imperial aspects----'"

Sir Robert lifted his eyes in remonstrance:

"How much more of that exceedingly dull and commonplace puff do you
propose to read, Jeffreys?" he asked.

"No more, Sir Robert. We are paying _