a Paris cabman. We had dinner at a dirty little
restaurant opposite the central post office, a place where all the
clients were cabmen or porters. Conversation was general, and it struck
me that a London cabman would have felt a little out of his depth.
Words like "functionary" and "unforgettable" and "exterminate" and
"independence" hurtled across the table every instant. And these were
just ordinary, vulgar, jolly, red-faced cabmen. Mind you,' he went on
hurriedly, as the lady crossed the room and took up his pen, 'I merely
mention this to illustrate my point. I'm not saying that cab-men ought
to be intellectuals. I don't think so; I agree with Keats--happy is
England, sweet her artless cabmen, enough their simple loveliness
for me. But when you come to the people who make up the collective
industrial brain-power of the country.... Why, do you know--'

'Oh no, no, no!' cried Mrs Manderson. 'I don't know anything at the
moment, except that your talking must be stopped somehow, if we are to
get any further with that letter to Mr Marlowe. You shall not get out of
it. Come!' She put the pen into his hand.

Trent looked at it with distaste. 'I warn you not to discourage my
talking,' he said dejectedly. 'Believe me, men who don't talk are even
worse to live with than men who do. O have a care of natures that
are mute. I confess I'm shirking writing this thing. It is almost an
indecency. It's mixing two moods to write the sort of letter I mean to
write, and at the same time to be sitting in the same room with you.'

She led him to his abandoned chair before the escritoire and pushed him
gently into it. 'Well, but please try. I want to see what you write, and
I want it to go to him at once. You see, I would be contented enough to
leave things as they are; but you say you must get at the truth, and if
you must, I want it to be as soon as possible. Do it now--you know you
can if you will--and I'll send it off the moment it's ready. Don't you
ever feel that--the longing to get the worrying letter into the post and
off your hands, so that you can't recall it if you would, and it's no
use fussing any more about it?'

'I will do as you wish,' he said, and turned to the paper, which he
dated as from his hotel. Mrs Manderson looked down at his bent head with
a gentle light in her eyes, and made as if to place a smoothing hand
upon his rather untidy crop of hair. But she did not touch it. Going in
silence to the piano, she began to