‘I wouldn’t let them off with a little,’ he said. ‘I’d give them--some of them, at any rate--a good deal. Perhaps I’m not quite used to it, but I can’t stand this sort of life--I should go all soft and queer under it.’ ‘Well, you’re not obliged to endure it at all,’ said Sprats. ‘You can clear out of town whenever you please and go to Saxonstowe--it is lovely in summer.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I’m going there soon. I--I don’t think town life quite appeals to me.’ ‘I suppose that you will go off to some waste place of the earth again, sooner or later, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I should think that if one once tastes that sort of thing one can’t very well resist the temptation. What made you wish to explore?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I always wanted to travel when I was a boy, but I never got any chance. Then the title came to me rather unexpectedly, you know, and when I found that I could indulge my tastes--well, I indulged them.’ ‘And you prefer the desert to the drawing-room?’ she said, watching him. ‘Lots!’ he said fervently. ‘Lots!’ Sprats smiled. ‘I should advise you,’ she said, ‘to cut London the day your book appears. You’ll be a lion, you know.’ ‘Oh, but!’ he exclaimed, ‘you don’t quite recognise what sort of book it is. It’s not an exciting narrative--no bears, or Indians, or scalpings, you know. It’s--well, it’s a bit dry--scientific stuff, and so on.’ Sprats smiled the smile of the wise woman and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is--dry or delicious, dull or enlivening,’ she remarked sagely, ‘the people who’ll lionise you won’t read it, though they’ll swear to your face that they sat up all night with it. You’ll see it lying about, with the pages all cut and a book-marker sticking out, but most of the people who’ll rave to your face about it wouldn’t be able to answer any question that you asked them concerning it. Lionising is an amusing feature of social life in England--if you don’t like the prospect of it, run away.’ ‘I shall certainly run,’ he answered. ‘I will go soon. I think, perhaps, that you exaggerate my importance, but I don’t want to incur any risk--it isn’t pleasant to be stared at, and pointed out, and all that sort of--of----’ ‘Of rot!’ she said. ‘No--it isn’t, to some people. To other people it seems quite a natural thing. It never seemed to bother Lucian Damerel, for example. You cannot realise the adulation which was showered upon him when he first flashed into the literary heavens. All the women were in love with him; all the girls love-sick because of his dark face and wondrous hair; he was stared at wherever he went; and he might have breakfasted, lunched, and dined at somebody else’s expense every day.’ ‘And he liked--that?’ asked Saxonstowe.