One's life isn't one's own here," he went on, when he had reached his own room.
It was a palatial apartment furnished in white and gold—Louis Quinze, or something of the sort—with very new decorations after Watteau covering the walls. The process of disfiguration, however, had already begun. A roll desk of the least possible Louis Quinze order stood in one of the tall windows; the carpet was marked by muddy footprints, and a matchboard screen had been run across one end of the room.
"Hullo, Evans," Fox shouted across it, "just see that man from Grant's, will you? Heard from the Central News yet?"
He was looking through the papers on the desk.
"Not yet, I've just rung them up for the fifth time," the answer came.
"Keep on at it," Fox exhorted.
"Here's Churchill's letter," he said to me. "Have an arm-chair; those blasted things are too uncomfortable for anything. Make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a minute."
I took an arm-chair and addressed myself to the Foreign Minister's letter. It expressed bored
[55]
