"Good Lord!" I cried. "Do you pigeon-hole bills and money-lenders' circulars and second-hand booksellers' catalogues and all their wrappers?" He folded up the letter, took me by the arm and regarded me with a smile of forced patience. "My dear Hilary, can't you ever understand that this room is just a workshop and nothing else? Here I think of nothing but my novel. I would as soon think of conducting my social correspondence in the bathroom. If you want to see the waste-paper basket where I throw my bills and unanswered letters from duchesses, and the desk--I share it with Doria--where I dash off my brilliant replies to money-lenders, come into the drawing-room. There, also, I shall be able to give you a drink." My eyes, following an unconscious glance from his, fell upon a new and hitherto unnoticed object--a little table, now startlingly obvious, in a corner of the all but unfurnished room, bearing a tray with half full decanter, syphon and glass. "You've got all I want here," said I. "No. That's mere stimulant. _Sapit lucernam_. It has a horrible flavour of midnight oil. There's not what you understand by a drink in it. Let's get out of the accursed hole." He dragged me almost by force into the drawing-room, where he entertained me courteously. It was curious to observe how his manner changed in--I have to use the Boldero jargon--in the different atmosphere. He expounded the qualities of his whisky--a present from old man Jornicroft, a rare blend which just a few "merchantates" (Barbara's word, he declared, was delicious) in Glasgow and Dundee and here and there a one in the City of London were able to procure. In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names. He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song. On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the standard had appreciated. "My dear man," he laughed, in answer to my protest. "I can afford it." For the quarter of an hour that I spent with him in his own drawing-room, he was quite the old Adrian. I drove to Paddington Station under the influence of his urbanity. But in the train, and afterwards at home, I was teased by vague apprehensions. Hitherto I had loosely and playfully qualified his methods of work as lunatic, without a thought as to the exact significance of the term. Now a horrible thought harassed me. Had I been precise without knowing it?