Sir Creighton went across the room to her and his scientific skill enabled him to squeeze between his finger and thumb that part of her arm where all the sensitive nerves meet. She shrieked. “I will force you to sympathise with me,” he said. “You have still another arm. What! they are actually taking your part?” Sir Creighton had a pretty wit. It was most exuberant when he had discovered a new torture founded on a purely scientific basis. That was how he kept himself young. “Oh, by the way,” said Amber, when he was going once more towards the door, “Guy has picked up with some one from New South Wales whose father said he had once known you. His name is--now what on earth did he say his name was?” “Wasn’t it Mr. Winwood?” said Josephine. “Of course. Pierce Winwood. Do you remember any man of that name--long ago--it must have been long ago. He made a big fortune in the meantime?” “Winwood--Winwood? No, I don’t remember any one bearing that name,” said Sir Creighton. “Better tell Guy to bring him out and I dare say he’ll draw the threads together.” “I told Guy I was sure that you would like to have a chat with him--the son, I mean; he said the father, who claimed to know you, was dead.” “There’s cause and effect for you,” said Sir Creighton. “Better ask him to dinner with Guy--the son, I mean.” He spoke with his hand on the handle of the door, and then went whistling down the corridor to his study which opened out upon the garden of roses at the back of the house. The long table was covered with scale drawings and the smell of the tracing paper filled the room. Sir Creighton stood for a few moments looking down at those tracings of the sections of wheels--wheels within wheels--and the profiles of pinions. “What the Nightingale sang to the Rose,” said the man of science. “Pah, what can any one say about the Nightingale and the Rose that has not been said before?” He turned over several of the drawings critically, and counted the leaves of one of the pinions. “He has made no allowance for end-shake,” he muttered. “A sixteenth on each pivot. Was it in the Garden of Gulistan? I rather think not. An English rose-garden--why not within the four-mile radius?” He stood at the glass door leading out to his own garden, and remained there for some minutes looking out upon the great clusters of mixed blooms. Then he turned to one of the desks and unlocking one of the drawers and, drawing it out some way, slipped his hand inside, relieving the spring of a secret compartment that seemed to be a fixture. He drew out a sheaf of papers, covered with verses with many erasures and those countless corrections which commonly occur in the manuscripts of poets who are not only inspired but who add to the original impulse of inspiration a fastidiousness of phrase quite unknown to the older poets.