And he had indeed had more than enough. His nerves, though he did not know it, and would have scorned the imputation, were slowly giving way. Hence, really, the danger to the pane! Through the pane, in the dying light he could see a cross-section of Shaftesbury Avenue, and an aged newspaper lad leaning against a lamp-post and displaying a poster which spoke of Isabel Joy. Isabel Joy yet again! That little fact of itself contributed to his exasperation. He thought, considering the importance of the Regent Theatre and the salary he was paying to his press-agent, that the newspapers ought to occupy their pages solely with the metropolitan affairs of Edward Henry Machin. But the wretched Isabel had, as it were, got London by the throat. She had reached Chicago from the West, on her triumphant way home, and had there contrived to be arrested, according to boast, but she was experiencing much more difficulty in emerging from the Chicago prison than in entering it. And the question was now becoming acute whether the emissary of the militant Suffragettes would arrive back in London within the specified period of a hundred days. Naturally, London was holding its breath. London will keep calm during moderate crises--such as a national strike or the agony of the House of Lords--but when the supreme excitation is achieved London knows how to let itself go. "If you please, Mr. Machin--" He turned. It was his typewriter, Miss Lindop, a young girl of some thirty-five years, holding a tea-tray. "But I’ve had my tea once!" he snapped. "But you’ve not had your dinner, sir, and it’s half-past eight!" she pleaded. He had known this girl for less than a month and he paid her fewer shillings a week than the years of her age, and yet somehow she had assumed a worshipping charge of him, based on the idea that he was incapable of taking care of himself. To look at her appealing eyes one might have thought that she would have died to insure his welfare. "And they want to see you about the linoleum for the gallery stairs," she added timidly. "The County Council man says it must be taken up." The linoleum for the gallery stairs! Something snapped in him. He almost walked right through the young woman and the tea-tray. "I’ll linoleum them!" he bitterly exclaimed, and disappeared. II.