down the Edgware Road, eating my brown bread and dates with some cheerfulness. Then I had a refreshing glass of milk. And, by the time I was half way across the Park by the path that leads from the Marble Arch up to the Gates at Hyde Park Corner, I seemed to have regained something of my former self: something of my Glastonbury character of will and self-reliance. The last three weeks seemed a dream; almost a bad dream, a nightmare, for a little: then only a dream, save for something of the Rosebud that seemed to reach out half-weakly into the present light. I asked the policeman at the Gates where Dunraven Place was, and he directed me. Then I arrived at No. 5, and was shown into a beautifully furnished room. Waiting, I began to examine a book-shelf that was full of beautifully bound books that harmonised with the room. They made me think how I should like to be rich and have all the books I wanted. I had my eye particularly on a large Gervinus's Shakespeare in half-calf, and my fingers began to feel as if they ought to take it down, and run away with it to a convenient arm-chair, and begin upon it at once. As I stood so, I heard a step behind me and turned.
'You are looking at my books, I see,' he said.
'Yes, sir,' I answered, 'it was a Gervinus's Shakespeare. I hope'
'Oh, not in the least! Please sit down.'
He motioned me into a large red leather chair on one side of the fire-place.
'You come from Messrs. … The name is rather confusing,' he said. '… I want a secretary to help me with to make himself generally useful as I may direct. Another young gentleman has been here this morning already: I mean from Messrs. …' He smiled.—'He objected to going out to Africa. Do you?'
'No.'
'You see—shortly—I want some one to help me to get together my things, write letters, and so on.—You understand me?'
'I think so.'
'The young friend who was going with me has suddenly been taken ill, and, as it is important that I
