I realised that I wanted to go to Paris because she was there. She had
said that she was going to Paris on the morrow of yesterday. The name
was pleasant to me, and it turned the scale.

Fox's eyes remained upon my face.

"Do you good, eh?" he dimly interpreted my thoughts. "A run over. I
thought you'd like it and, look here, Polehampton's taken over the
_Bi-Monthly_; wants to get new blood into it, see? He'd take something.
I've been talking to him--a short series.... 'Aspects.' That sort of
thing." I tried to work myself into some sort of enthusiasm of
gratitude. I knew that Fox had spoken well of me to Polehampton--as a
sort of set off.

"You go and see Mr. P.," he confirmed; "it's really all arranged. And
then get off to Paris as fast as you can and have a good time."

"Have I been unusually cranky lately?" I asked.

"Oh, you've been a little off the hooks, I thought, for the last week or
so."

He took up a large bottle of white mucilage, and I accepted it as a sign
of dismissal. I was touched by his solicitude for my health. It always
did touch me, and I found myself unusually broad-minded in thought as I
went down the terra-cotta front steps into the streets. For all his
frank vulgarity, for all his shirt-sleeves--I somehow regarded that
habit of his as the final mark of the Beast--and the Louis Quinze
accessories, I felt a warm good-feeling for the little man.