r in the street as he passed: 'See that extraordinary thought
blazing away there in that fellow's brain?' It was, in fact, curious to
him that people did not stop and gaze at his cranium, so much the thing
felt like a hollowed turnip illuminated by this candle of an idea. But
nobody with whom he came into contact appeared to be aware of the
immense success of _Love in Babylon_. In the office of Powells were
seven full-fledged solicitors and seventeen other clerks, without
counting Henry, and not a man or youth of the educated lot of them made
the slightest reference to _Love in Babylon_ during all that day. (It
was an ordinary, plain, common, unromantic, dismal Tuesday in Lincoln's
Inn Fields.) Eighteen thousand persons had already bought _Love in
Babylon_; possibly several hundreds of copies had been sold since nine
o'clock that morning; doubtless someone was every minute inquiring for
it and demanding it in bookshop or library, just as someone is born
every minute. And yet here was the author, the author himself, the
veritable and only genuine author, going about his daily business
unhonoured, unsung, uncongratulated, even unnoticed! It was incredible,
and, besides being incredible, it was exasperating. Henry was modest,
but there are limits to modesty, and more than once in the course of
that amazing and endless Tuesday Henry had a narrow escape of dragging
_Love in Babylon_ bodily into the miscellaneous conversation of the
office. However, with the aid of his natural diffidence he refrained
from doing so.

At five-fifty Sir George departed, as usual, to catch the six-five for
Wimbledon, where he had a large residence, which outwardly resembled at
once a Bloomsbury boarding-house, a golf-club, and a Riviera hotel.
Henry, after Sir George's exit, lapsed into his principal's chair and
into meditation. The busy life of the establishment died down until only
the office-boys and Henry were left. And still Henry sat, in the
leathern chair at the big table in Sir George's big room, thinking,
thinking, thinking, in a vague but golden and roseate manner, about the
future.

Then the door opened, and Foxall, the emperor of the Powellian
office-boys, entered.

'Here's someone to see you,' Foxall whispered archly; he economized time
by licking envelopes the while. Every night Foxall had to superintend
and participate in the licking of about two hundred envelopes and as
many stamps.

'Who is it?' Henry asked, instantly pertur