"You very busy?" he asked.

The Editor making red marks on a long slip of printed paper threw
the pencil down.

"No. I am done. Social paragraphs. This office is the place
where everything is known about everybody--including even a great
deal of nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this room.
Waifs and strays from home, from up-country, from the Pacific.
And, by the way, last time you were here you picked up one of that
sort for your assistant--didn't you?"

"I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils
of solitude," said Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at
the half-resentful tone. His laugh was not very loud, but his
plump person shook all over. He was aware that his younger
friend's deference to his advice was based only on an imperfect
belief in his wisdom--or his sagacity. But it was he who had first
helped Renouard in his plans of exploration: the five-years'
programme of scientific adventure, of work, of danger and
endurance, carried out with such distinction and rewarded modestly
with the lease of Malata island by the frugal colonial government.
And this reward, too, had been due to the journalist's advocacy
with word and pen--for he was an influential man in the community.
Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was himself
without great sympathy for a certain side of that man which he
could not quite make out. He only felt it obscurely to be his real
personality--the true--and, perhaps, the absurd. As, for instance,
in that case of the assistant. Renouard had given way to the
arguments of his friend and backer--the argument against the