His friend the Editor turned to him squarely. "Willie took me into
consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as
well tell you what is up. I shall try to be as short as I can.
But in confidence--mind!"

He waited. Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably,
assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning.
Professor Moorsom--physicist and philosopher--fine head of white
hair, to judge from the photographs--plenty of brains in the head
too--all these famous books--surely even Renouard would know. . . .

Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn't his sort of reading, and
his friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his
sort--except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary
page of that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his
life). The only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not
ignore the fashionable philosopher of the age. Not that anybody
read Moorsom at the Antipodes, but everybody had heard of him--
women, children, dock labourers, cabmen. The only person (besides
himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he knew, was old Dunster,
who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it Moorsomite) years
and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself up into the
great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too. Quite the
fashion in the highest world.

Renouard listened with profoundly concealed attention. "A
charlatan," he muttered languidly.