"Sorry I can't go too--awful bore. I've had a tiring day, too, and a ballet would be refreshing. The governor's been in a state of filthy irritation and nerves for the last fortnight." "Sir Robert Llwellyn, isn't it?" "Yes, he's my chief, and a very good fellow too, as a rule. He went away for several months, you know--travelled abroad for his health. When he first came back, three months ago, he looked as fit as a fiddle, and seemed awfully pleased with himself all round. But lately he's been decidedly off colour. He seems worried about something, does hardly any work, and always seems waiting and looking out for a coming event. He bothers me out of my life, always coming into my room and talking about nothing, or speculating upon the possibility of all sorts of new discoveries which will upset every one's theories." "I met him in Dieppe in the spring. He seemed all right then, just at the beginning of his leave." "Well, he's certainly not that now, worse luck, and confound him. He interferes with my work no end. Good-bye; sorry I must go." He passed softly over the heavy carpet of the smoking-room, and Spence was left alone once more. It was after seven o'clock. Spence wasn't hungry yet. The light meal in the hammam had satisfied him. He resolved to go to the Empire alone, not because the idea of going seemed very attractive, but because he had planned it and could substitute no other way of spending the evening for the first determination. So, about nine o'clock, he strolled into the huge, garish music-hall. He went into the Empire, and already his contentment was beginning to die away again. The day seemed a day of trivialities, a sordid, uneventful day of London gloom, which he had vainly tried to disperse with little futile rockets of amusement. He sat down in a stall and watched a clever juggler doing wonderful things with billiard balls. After the juggler a coarsely handsome Spanish girl came upon the stage--he remembered her at La Scala, in Paris. She was said to be one of the beauties of Europe, and a king's favourite. After the Spanish woman there were two men, "brothers" some one. One was disguised as a donkey--a veritable _peau de chagrin_!--the other as a tramp, and together they did laughable things. With a sigh he went up-stairs and moved slowly through the thronged promenade. The hard faces of the men and women repelled him. One elderly Jewish-looking person reminded him of a great grey slug. He turned into the American bar at one extremity of the horse-shoe. It was early yet, and the big room, pleasantly cool, was quite empty. A man brought him a long, parti-coloured drink. He felt the pressure of a packet in his pocket. It was Cyril Hands's letter, he found as he took it out. He thought of young Lambert at the club, a friend of Hands and fellow-worker in the same field, and languidly opened the letter.