“I wish I knew who it was who came in,” he said, at the end.
“Goodness me, are you still thinking about that? You had a perfect right to be in the office.”
“That’s the trouble,” he smiled, “I wasn’t in it.”
“Oh, pooh!”
He looked quizzically at her. “I wish you’d teach me to go through the world with my thumb to my nose as you do.”
She laughed out merrily. “Is that the way you see me?”
“Yes, it is. And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s the only way to take the world. I hope you will keep it up.”
“I mean to, and when they put me in my coffin my hand will set that way.” She laughed again at the picture this conjured up in her mind.
“Gorgeous youth,” he said, a little bitterly, looking away from her.
She sobered at once. It was absurd that he should speak of youth as something in the long lost years behind him, for he was looking young enough as he sat there. She thought of something to divert him from introspection.
“I say, that leader of yours was stunning. I couldn’t have done it without being sentimental. You make me green with envy. And do you know that you have had quite a lot to do with the making of me?” He followed her glance to the Sydney Bulletin. “I’ve been taking that for ten years, ever since I read an article by you on Joseph Conrad.”
“Oh, really!” He looked quickly at her and away again.
“And you have been my literary adviser ever since. You introduced me to Shaw, Wells, Ibsen, George Moore,
