"And what do you think of that, as a purple passage, my boy? 'Pon my soul, it seems to me, now, that 'Cynthia' is functioning, she is in quite her best vein. I must get back home with her, at once. Pull up on this side of the signpost. I must not advance a foot into Hades, this morning, or I shall lose touch with the minx. She ought to be good for five or six thousand words today. And they are badly needed. The new story is three instalments behind the time-table already. It is the villain of the new piece, who is giving us trouble. Even 'Cynthia,' herself, is tired of him, I believe. He is a sallow person, with a pair of black, bushy eyebrows, which run up and down his forehead, with a regularity which is depressing. Two or three times, in each instalment, the confounded things go up and down, like sky-rockets. He lives in a mysterious house, in one of the mean streets, in the new artistic quarter, in Brixton. The house is full of Eastern furniture, and glamour. That is threadbare enough, isn't it? And I am using back numbers of 'Punch,' for humour." Once again, the King let out the car. He knew Uncle Bond well enough to recognize that the little man was talking extravagantly now, to hide the note of sincere personal feeling, which had sounded unmistakably in his talk of the procession, although he had been so careful to attribute it all to 'Cynthia.' It was on occasions such as this, after one of his sudden flashes of sincerity, that Uncle Bond became most outrageously flippant. Nothing but burlesque humour, and grotesque, extravagant nonsense was to be expected from him now. At the moment, flippancy jarred on the King. His attention had been riveted by the little man's vivid, figurative talk of the procession, so peculiarly apposite, as it was, to his own position, and the assurance of unchanging friendship, with which it had ended, had moved, and humbled him. He did not deserve, in view of his concealment of his real identity, he had no right to accept, such friendship. But Uncle Bond never did the expected thing! Now, as the throbbing car leapt forward, and swept along the broad, sunlit road at its highest speed, the little man became suddenly silent. A new mood of abstraction seemed to fall upon him. It was almost as if he had still something on his mind, as if there was still something which he wanted to say. Soon the Paradise-Hades signpost, to which the King himself had introduced the little man, flashed into view, on the right of the road. The King at once pulled up the car, well on the Paradise side of the post. Uncle Bond threw off his unusual abstraction, in a moment, and scrambled, nimbly enough, out of the car. The little man tested the car door carefully, to make sure that he had fastened it securely behind him. Then he looked up at the King, with an odd, provocative twinkle in his mischievous, spectacled eyes.