The telephone rang in the principal's room of George's office in Museum Street. He raised his head from the drawing-board with the false gesture of fatigued impatience which, as a business man, he had long since acquired, and took the instrument. As a fact he was not really busy; he was only pretending to be busy; and he rather enjoyed the summons of the telephone, with its eternal promise of some romantic new turn of existence. Nevertheless, though he was quite alone, he had to affect that the telephone was his bane. "Can Sir Isaac Davids speak to you, sir, from the Artists Club?" "Put him on." Immediately came the thick, rich voice of Sir Isaac, with its implications of cynicism and triumphant disdain--attenuated and weakened in the telephone, suggesting an object seen through the wrong end of a telescope. "Is that you, Cannon?" "It is," said George shortly. Without yet knowing it, he had already begun to hate Sir Isaac. His criticism of Sir Isaac was that the man was too damnably sure of himself. And not all Sir Isaac's obvious power, and influence, and vast potential usefulness to a young architect, could prevent George from occasionally, as he put it, 'standing up to the fellow.' "Well, you'd better come along here, if you can. I want to see you," said the unruffled voice of Sir Isaac. "Now?" "Yes." "All right." As George replaced the instrument, he murmured: "I know what that means. It's all off." And after a moment: "I knew jolly well it would be." He glanced round the very orderly room, to which, by judicious furnishing, he had given a severe distinction at no great cost. On the walls were a few interesting things, including a couple of his own perspectives. A neo-impressionist oil-sketch over the mantelpiece, with blue trees and red fields and a girl whose face was a featureless blob, imperiously monopolized the attention of the beholder, warning him, whoever he might be, that the inescapable revolutionary future was now at hand. The room and everything in it, that entity upon which George had spent so much trouble, and of which he had been so proud, seemed futile, pointless, utterly unprofitable.