ut conviction. 'Then you'll make a lot
of money. You must be very careful about your next contracts. I hope you
didn't agree to let Mr. Winter have a second book on the same terms as
this one.'

Henry recalled a certain clause of the contract which he had signed.

'I am afraid I did,' he admitted sheepishly. 'But the terms are quite
fair. I saw to that.'

'Mr. Knight! Mr. Knight!' she burst out. 'Why are all you young and
clever men the same? Why do you perspire in order that publishers may
grow fat? _I_ know what Spring Onions' terms would be. Seriously, you
ought to employ an agent. He'd double your income. I don't say Mr.
Snyder particularly----'

'But Mr. Snyder is a very good agent, isn't he?'

'Yes,' affirmed Miss Foster gravely. 'He acts for all the best men.'

'Then I shall come to him,' said Henry. 'I had thought of doing so. You
remember when I called that day--it was mentioned then.'

He made this momentous decision in an instant, and even as he announced
it he wondered why. However, Mr. Snyder's ten per cent no longer
appeared to him outrageous.

'And now can you give me some paper and a pencil, Mr. Knight? I forgot
mine in my hurry not to miss you. And I'll sit at the table. May I?
Thanks awfully.'

She sat near to him, while he hastily and fumblingly searched for
paper. The idea of being alone with her in the offices seemed delightful
to him. And just then he heard a step in the passage, and a well-known
dry cough, and the trailing of a long brush on the linoleum. Of course,
the caretaker, the inevitable and omnipresent Mrs. Mawner, had invested
the place, according to her nightly custom.

Mrs. Mawner opened the door of Sir George's room, and stood on the mat,
calmly gazing within, the brush in one hand and a duster in the other.

'I beg pardon, sir,' said she inimically. 'I thought Sir George was
gone.'

'Sir George has gone,' Henry replied.

Mrs. Mawner enveloped the pair in her sinister glance.

'Shall you be long, sir?'

'I can't say.' Henry was firm.

Giving a hitch to her sackcloth, she departed and banged the door.

Henry and Miss Foster were solitary again. And as he glanced at her, he
thought deliciously: 'I am a gay spark.' Never before had such a notion
visited him.

'What first gave you the idea of writing _Love in Babylon_, Mr.
Knight?' began Miss Foster, smiling upon him with a marvellous
allurement.

Henry was nearly an hour later than usual in arriving home, but h