time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a tune out
of an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combine
very naturally in the mind of one to whom another has just spoken
unpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than he
intended to reveal. Denham began to wonder what sort of person Rodney
was, and at the same time Rodney began to think about Denham.

"You're a slave like me, I suppose?" he asked.

"A solicitor, yes."

"I sometimes wonder why we don't chuck it. Why don't you emigrate,
Denham? I should have thought that would suit you."

"I've a family."

"I'm often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn't live
without this"--and he waved his hand towards the City of London, which
wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray-blue
cardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper blue.

"There are one or two people I'm fond of, and there's a little good
music, and a few pictures, now and then--just enough to keep one
dangling about here. Ah, but I couldn't live with savages! Are you fond
of books? Music? Pictures? D'you care at all for first editions? I've
got a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I can't
afford to give what they ask."

They had reached a small court of high eighteenth-century houses, in
one of which Rodney had his rooms. They climbed a very steep staircase,
through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell, illuminating the
banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles of plates set on the
window-sills, and jars half-full of milk. Rodney's rooms were small, but
the sitting-room window looked out into a courtyard, with its flagged
pavement, and its single tree, and across to the flat red-brick fronts
of the opposite houses, which would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, if
he had come out of his grave for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit
his lamp, pulled his curtains, offered Denham a chair, and, flinging
the manuscript of his paper on the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the
table, exclaimed:

"Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it's over now, and so we may
think no more about it."

He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producing
glasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and saucers. He put on a faded crimson
dressing-gown, and a pair of red slippers, and advanced to Denham with a
tumbler in one hand and a well-burnished book in the other.

"The Baske