within himself. He then winked--a phenomenon hitherto unknown at the
Treasury. He stayed so late at his office that he made the acquaintance
of two charwomen, whom he courteously chaffed. He was defeated in the
subsequent encounter, and acknowledged the fact by two half-crowns.

At the Oriental Club he told Insott that he might soon have some money
to invest; and he was startled and saddened to discover that Insott knew
almost nothing about exciting investments, or about anything at all,
except the rigours of tube travel to Golder's Green. Insott had sunk
into a deplorable groove. When, confidential, Insott told him the salary
of a branch-manager of a vast corporation near Hanover Square, and
incidentally mentioned that a bank-clerk might not marry without the
consent in writing of the vast corporation, Mr. Prohack understood and
pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply
because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour,
had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of
branch-managers Insott was a free and easy plutocrat.

As he departed from the Oriental Mr. Prohack sighed: "Poor Insott!" A
sturdy and even exultant cheerfulness was, however, steadily growing in
him. Poor Insott, unaware that he had been talking to a man with an
assured income of ten thousand pounds a year, had unconsciously helped
that man to realise the miracle of his own good fortune.

Mr. Prohack's route home lay through a big residential square or so and
along residential streets of the first quality. All the houses were big,
and they seemed bigger in the faint October mist. It was the hour after
lighting up and before the drawing of blinds and curtains. Mr. Prohack
had glimpses of enormous and magnificent interiors,--some right in the
sky, some on the ground--with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily