He was used to newspaper offices, and he was not surprised to find the editorial force of the _Every Evening_ housed in a series of dens, opening one beyond the other till the last, with the chief in it, looked down on the street from which he climbed. He thought it all fit enough, for the present; but, while he still dwelt in the future, and before the office-boy had taken his letter from him to the chief, he swiftly flung up a building for the _Every Evening_ as lofty and as ugly as any of the many-storied towers that rose about the frantic neighborhood. He blundered upon two other writers before he reached the chief; one of them looked up from his desk, and roared at him in unintelligible affliction; the other simply wagged his head, without lifting it, in the direction of the final room, where Ray found himself sitting beside the editor-in-chief, without well knowing how he got there. The editor did not seem to know either, or to care that he was there, for some time; he kept on looking at this thing and that thing on the table before him; at everything but the letter Ray had sent in. When he did take that up he did not look at Ray; and while he talked with him he scarcely glanced at him; there were moments when he seemed to forget there was anybody there; and Ray’s blood began to burn with a sense of personal indignity. He wished to go away, and leave the editor to find him gone at his leisure; but he felt bound to Mr. Brandreth, and he staid. At last the editor took up a book from the litter of newspapers and manuscripts before him, and said: “What we want is a rapid and attractive _résumé_ of this book, with particular reference to Coquelin and his place on the stage and in art. No one else has the book yet, and we expect to use the article from it in our Saturday edition. See what you can do with it, and bring it here by ten to-morrow. You can run from one to two thousand words--not over two.” He handed Ray the book and turned so definitively to his papers and letters again that Ray had no choice but to go. He left with the editor a self-respectful parting salutation, which the editor evidently had no use for, and no one showed a consciousness of him, not even the office-boy, as he went out.