imaginative, inflammable, quick to feel, quick to act. He didn't
complain of it, it was the way he liked women to be;, but he was not
impelled for the hour to commit the sealed packets to the flames. He
dropped them again into their secret well, and after that he went
out. He felt restless and excited; another day was lost for work--
the dreadful job to be performed for Mr. Locket was still further
off.



CHAPTER III.



Ten days after Mrs. Ryves's visit he paid by appointment another call
on the editor of the Promiscuous. He found him in the little
wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter's sense the smoky
brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his
office--a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopaedias, a photographic
gallery of popular contributors--and he promised at first to consume
very few of the moments for which so many claims competed. It was
Mr. Locket himself however who presently made the interview spacious,
gave it air after discovering that poor Baron had come to tell him
something more interesting than that he couldn't after all patch up
his tale. Peter had begun with this, had intimated respectfully that
it was a case in which both practice and principle rebelled, and
then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was affected by his audacity,
had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands.
He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn't even
protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away