'Surely the quotation is rather hackneyed to begin with?' suggested Drake with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness. The reporter looked at him suspiciously. 'We have to consider our readers,' he replied with some asperity. 'By the way, what paper do you represent?' The reporter hesitated a little. 'The _Evening Meteor_,' he admitted reluctantly, keeping a watchful eye upon his questioner. He saw the lips join in a hard line, and began to wonder whether, after all, the need for diplomacy had passed. 'I begin to appreciate the meaning of journalistic enterprise,' said Drake. 'Your editor makes a violent attack upon me, and then sends a member of his staff to interview me the moment I set foot in England.' 'You hardly take the correct view, if I may say so. Our chief when he made the attacks acted under a sense of responsibility, and he thought it only fair that you should have the earliest possible opportunity of making your defence.' 'I beg your pardon,' replied Drake gravely. 'Your chief is the most considerate of men, and I trust that his equity will leave him a margin of profit, only I don't seem to feel that I need make any defence. I have no objection to be interviewed, as I told you, but you must make it clear that I intend nothing in the way of apology. Is that understood?' The pressman agreed, and made a note of the proviso. 'There is another point. I have seen nothing of the paper necessarily for the last few weeks. The _Meteor_ has, I suppose, continued its--crusade, shall we call it?--but on what lines exactly I am, of course, ignorant. It will be better, consequently, that you should put questions and I answer them, upon this condition, however,--that all reference is omitted to any point on which I am unwilling to speak.' The reporter demurred, but, seeing that Drake was obdurate, he was compelled to give way. 'The entire responsibility of the expedition rests with me,' Drake explained, 'but there were others concerned in it. You might trench upon private matters which only affect them.'