"No. The air of this place is so dense that it gives me a headache. The day is uncommonly warm for this season of the year. Let us return to the house. I have a new song I should like to show you. To-morrow I return to London, and shall not see you for some time." "Oh, I can call on you when I go back to town," I said idly, for my brain was still preoccupied with the glass eye problem. "No! No! Pardon me, no," said Mr. Monk decidedly and hastily. "I am going away for a few weeks to the Continent--on business of course." "Business," I echoed, "I thought you were free, Mr. Monk." He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, as we slowly walked across the lawn towards the shallow steps of the terrace. "I have five hundred a year," he declared, "and what is that, a mere pittance. I have to allow Gertrude something and have this house to keep up. Also my flat in London has to be rented. I can't do that on ten pounds a week." It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why he did not remain at Burwain and play the part of a country gentleman, to reduce his expenditure, when he proceeded. "Yes, I am in business of a sort, connected with commissions on loans. That is, you will understand, Mr. Vance, I am not a money lender--far from it. I simply find people who have no money and who want it and agree to procure them money from those who possess it, on condition that I have a ten per cent commission. In a word I induce my many friends to benefit each other and so benefit myself. Come Mr. Vance, you are a rising dramatist who should be better known in the West End. Suppose you allow me--at ten per cent--to arrange a loan for you to produce one of your better class plays." "I have no security," I objected. "I can arrange that," said Mr. Monk with an airy wave of his hand, "and if you can find that eye," I started violently, but he did not appear to notice, "and get the fifty thousand pounds, I shall let you have the money myself at the same percentage. I shall not charge any commission," he ended generously, quite forgetting that he was proposing to gamble with his daughter's money. But that obtuseness was Mr. Monk all over. "If I could see you in town,"-- "Later on: later on," he said hastily mounting the steps, "say in three or four months when I return from the Continent. Then we can have a talk." "Your address is?"-- He interrupted again. "I shall see you here: I shall see you here. It will be much more convenient for me," and he passed through the French window into the drawing-room.