Then--but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private in a corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible, was “the Greek antiquity man.” The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully. “What does this mean? H'mm,” said he. “So far as I can ascertain it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part”--here he glared at me with intention--“of an extremely illiterate--ah--person.” He read slowly from the paper, “Pollock, Erckman, Tauchnitz, Henniker”--four names familiar to me. “Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of the thing?” I asked. “'I have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular employment. That is the meaning.'” He returned me the paper, and I fled without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology. I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began. Above all he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not include Greek. He would supply me--here I capered among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with material to make my tale sure--so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fiction. And I--I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally true. I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing. Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took steps in my direction.