the real thing, and...." When one is an author one looks at things in
that way, you know.

By that time I was ready to knock at the door of the great Callan. I
seemed to be jerked into the commonplace medium of a great, great--oh,
an infinitely great--novelist's home life. I was led into a well-lit
drawing-room, welcomed by the great man's wife, gently propelled into a
bedroom, made myself tidy, descended and was introduced into the
sanctum, before my eyes had grown accustomed to the lamp-light. Callan
was seated upon his sofa surrounded by an admiring crowd of very local
personages. I forget what they looked like. I think there was a man
whose reddish beard did not become him and another whose face might have
been improved by the addition of a reddish beard; there was also an
extremely moody dark man and I vaguely recollect a person who lisped.

They did not talk much; indeed there was very little conversation. What
there was Callan supplied. He--spoke--very--slowly--and--very
--authoritatively, like a great actor whose aim is to hold the stage as
long as possible. The raising of his heavy eyelids at the opening door
conveyed the impression of a dark, mental weariness; and seemed somehow
to give additional length to his white nose. His short, brown beard was
getting very grey, I thought. With his lofty forehead and with his
superior, yet propitiatory smile, I was of course familiar. Indeed one
saw them on posters in the street. The notables did not want to talk.
They wanted to be spell-bound--and they were. Callan sat there in an
appropriate attitude--the one in which he was always photographed. One
hand supported his head, the other toyed with his watch-chain. His face
was uniformly solemn, but his eyes were disconcertingly furtive. He
cross-questioned me as to my walk from Canterbury; remarked that the
cathedral was a--magnificent--Gothic--Monument and set me right as to