Hugh Massinger, Esq., was a person of some distinction as a novelist, and an æsthetic dabbler in Gothic mysteries. His novel “The Torch Lily” had had a great sale, especially in the United States, where an enthusiastic reviewer had compared it to Flaubert’s “Salambo.” Hugh Massinger had edited “Marie de France” and the “Romance of the Rose,” issued an abridged “Froissart,” and published books on “The Mediæval Colour-sense,” and “The Higher Love of Provence.” His poems, sensuous, Swinburnian fragments, full of purple sunsets and precious stones, roses, red mouths and white bosoms had fascinated some of those erotic and over-civilised youngsters who turn from Kipling as from raw meat. When Miss Champion offered Eve the post of secretary to Hugh Massinger, she accepted it as a piece of unexpected good fortune, for it seemed to be the very berth that she had hoped for, but feared to get. Miss Champion said some characteristic things. “Of course, you know who Mr. Massinger is? Yes. You have read ‘The Torch Lily’? A little bold, but so full of colour. I must warn you that he is just a trifle eccentric. You are to call and see him at ten o’clock to-morrow at his flat in Purbeck Street. The terms are two pounds a week, which, of course, includes my commission.” “I am very grateful to you, Miss Champion. I hope I shall satisfy Mr. Massinger.” Miss Champion looked at her meaningly. “The great thing, Miss Carfax, is to be impersonal. Always the work, and nothing but the work. That is how my protegées have always succeeded.” Eve concluded that Hugh Massinger was rather young. Miss Champion had stated that he was eccentric, but it was not the kind of eccentricity that Eve had expected to find in Purbeck Street. A youngish manservant with a bleached and dissolute face showed her into a long room that was hung from floor to ceiling with black velvet. The carpet was a pure white pile, and with the ceiling made the room look like a black box fitted with a white bottom and lid. There was only one window, and no furniture beyond a lounge covered with blood-red velvet, two bronze bowls on hammered iron pedestals, an antique oak table, two joint-stools, and a very finely carved oak court-cupboard in one corner. The fire burnt in an iron brazier standing in an open fireplace. There were no mirrors in the room, and on each square of the black velvet hangings a sunflower was embroidered in gold silk. Heraldic glass had been inserted into the centre panels of the window, and in the recess a little silver tripod lamp burnt with a bluish flame, and gave out a faint perfume. Eve had walked from Kate Duveen’s. It was the usual wet day, and the streets were muddy, and as she sat on the joint-stool the valet had offered her she saw that she had left footprints on the white pile carpet. It seemed rather an unpropitious beginning, bringing London mud into this eccentric gentleman’s immaculate room.