"It just occurred to me--please tell me if I’m being indiscreet--that perhaps you wouldn’t mind doing me a little service. I may oversleep myself in the morning, and I can’t get at my man now. Would you mind giving me a ring up on the ’phone about six o’clock? You see, I have the telephone by my bed, and it would be sure to wake me--especially if you told the operator to keep on ringing. It’s very necessary I should run along to the newspaper office and see the editor personally as soon as he gets there. Otherwise I might be done in. Of course, I could sit up for the rest of the night----" He laughed shortly. Nearly opposite the end of Clifford Street, in Bond Street, was a hosier’s shop with the royal arms over the entrance and half a dozen pairs of rich blue-and-crimson pyjamas--and nothing else--displayed in the window against a chaste background of panelled acacia wood. Lilian saw a phantasm of her client’s lordly chamber, with the bed and the telephone by the bed, and the great form of the man himself recumbent and moveless, gloriously and imperfectly covered in a suit of the blue-and-crimson pyjamas. She heard the telephone bell ring--ring--ring--ring--ring--ring, pertinaciously. The figure did not stir. Ring--ring--ring--ring! At last the figure stirred, turned over, half sat up, seized the telephone, which, pacified, ceased to ring, and the figure listened--to her voice! It was her voice that was heard in the chamber.... The most sharply masculine hallucination that she had ever had, perhaps the only one. It moved her to the point of fright. The whole house might have rocked under her--rocked once, and then resumed its firmness. She felt faint, terror-struck, and excruciatingly, inexplicably happy. And she was ashamed; she was shocked by the mystery of herself. Flushing, she bent her face over the desk. "Perhaps I’d better sit up all night," Lord Mackworth added apologetically. "What’s your number?" she asked in a low voice, not looking up. "Regent 1067." "Regent 1067," she repeated the number, even writing it on her note pad. "You’re really awfully kind. I hesitated to suggest it. I do hope you’ll forgive me." She looked up quickly, and into his eyes. "I shall be delighted to give you a ring," she said, with sweet, smiling eagerness. "It’s no trouble at all. None at all, I assure you." She was the divine embodiment of the human and specially feminine desire to please, to please charmingly, to please completely, to please with the whole force and beauty of her individuality. The poor boy must get a few hours’ sleep. A man needed sleep; sleep was important to him. As for her, the woman’s task was to watch and work, and when the moment came she would wake the man--the child--who was incapable of waking himself. "Well, thanks ever so much." He rose. "I suppose you don’t want a carbon of your article as well?" she suggested. "It’s an idea," he agreed. "You never know. I think I will have a carbon."