esh ground and I revelled in it. I committed myself to that kind
of emotional, lyrical outburst that one dislikes so much on re-reading.
I was half conscious of the fact, but I ignored it.

The thunderstorm was over, and there was a moist sparkling freshness in
the air when I hurried with my copy to the _Hour_ office in the Avenue
de l'Opera. I wished to be rid of it, to render impossible all chance of
revision on the morrow.

I wanted, too, to feel elated; I expected it. It was a right. At the
office I found the foreign correspondent, a little cosmopolitan Jew
whose eyebrows began their growth on the bridge of his nose. He was
effusive and familiar, as the rest of his kind.

"Hullo, Granger," was his greeting. I was used to regarding myself as
fallen from a high estate, but I was not yet so humble in spirit as to
relish being called Granger by a stranger of his stamp. I tried to
freeze him politely.

"Read your stuff in the _Hour_," was his rejoinder; "jolly good I call
it. Been doing old Red-Beard? Let's have a look. Yes, yes. That's the
way--that's the real thing--I call it. Must have bored you to death ...
old de Mersch I mean. I ought to have had the job, you know. My
business, interviewing people in Paris. But _I_ don't mind. Much rather
you did it than I. You do it a heap better."

I murmured thanks. There was a pathos about the sleek little man--a
pathos that is always present in the type. He seemed to be trying to
assume a deprecating equality.

"Where are you going to-night?" he asked, with sudden effusiveness. I
was taken aback. One is not used to being asked these questions after
five minutes' acquaintance. I said that I had no plans.

"Look here," he said, brightening up, "come and have dinner with me at
Breguet's, and look in at the Opera afterward. We'll have a real nice
chat."

I was too tired to frame an adequate excuse. Besides, the little man was
as eager as a child for a new toy. We went to Breguet's and had a really
excellent dinner.

"Always come here," he said; "one meets a lot of swells. It runs away
with a deal of money--but I don't care to do things on the cheap, not
for the _Hour_, you know. You can always be certain when I say that I
have a thing from a senator that he is a senator, and not an old woman
in a paper kiosque. Most of them do that sort of thing, you know."

"I always wondered," I said, mildly.

"That's de Sourdam I nodded to as we came in, and that old chap there is