"Well," he said, with a shrug, "you know you're my heaven-sent find, and that I'm going to keep you to myself.... So we wait? That's decided?" "Wait," I repeated doggedly. Then, as if he had sufficiently tested my belief in myself, that smile broke over his agate of a face again. He leaned back to look at me. "You're an extraordinary chap!" he positively sparkled fondness at me. "What are you getting now at the F.B.C.--three pounds?" "Still I say wait," I said, nodding once or twice. "And getting married on it!" he marvelled. "Almost immediately." Then Pepper laughed outright. "Well, I won't say you're like the chap who asked for a rise to get married on. 'You get married--you'll get the rise then!' his boss told him." Then, the smile going out again, he added, "And suppose we're forestalled on this new scale of rates?" I spoke with strongly suppressed energy. "They can't forestall you and me. Don't you see? Don't you see we're _hors concours_--in a class by ourselves? We are what they can only make a bluff at being--ever! 'There is a tide'--but it hasn't got to be taken before the flood!" He took the whole of me in in one shining look, as a camera might have seen me. He was openly admiring me. "By Jove," he burst out, "but you don't lack confidence!... Of course you see the joke?" "You mean--'Jeffries, J. H., Int. Ex. Con., £3'--two-ten for his suits--eighteenpence for his dinners--getting married--and still hanging back from this because it's going to pay fifty times better twelve months from now?" That, I took it, was the joke. "And you're quite--quite--sure?" he dared me for the last time, his face radiant. I brought my hand softly down on the table. "Yes!" I cried. "I'm talking what I _know_--you're only talking what you _think_!" His small manicured hand flew out to my great one. "Oh--bravo!" he cried. "Wait it is, then. By Jove, when it does come, you'll have deserved it!... Here, shove your glass over--I believe you're entirely right--but if it was only for your consummate cheek we should have to drink to it!" And he filled up the two glasses with the vivid green liqueur again, touching his against mine. I left him shortly after, or rather he left me in order to keep one of his urgent and mysterious appointments; and I wandered slowly down towards my own abode.