I winced as I remembered that this was exactly what I myself had
wanted. "Already?" I cried with a sort of sense that my friend had
fled to me for protection.

Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his glasses: they suggested
the electric headlights of some monstrous modem ship, and I felt as
if Paraday and I were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw his
momentum was irresistible. "I was confident that I should be the
first in the field. A great interest is naturally felt in Mr.
Paraday's surroundings," he heavily observed.

"I hadn't the least idea of it," said Paraday, as if he had been
told he had been snoring.

"I find he hasn't read the article in The Empire," Mr. Morrow
remarked to me. "That's so very interesting--it's something to
start with," he smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, which
were violently new, and to look encouragingly round the little
garden. As a "surrounding" I felt how I myself had already been
taken in; I was a little fish in the stomach of a bigger one. "I
represent," our visitor continued, "a syndicate of influential
journals, no less than thirty-seven, whose public--whose publics, I
may say--are in peculiar sympathy with Mr. Paraday's line of
thought. They would greatly appreciate any expression of his views
on the subject of the art he so nobly exemplifies. In addition to
my connexion with the syndicate just mentioned I hold a particular
commission from The Tatler, whose most prominent department,
'Smatter and Chatter'--I dare say you've often enjoyed it--attracts
such attention. I was honoured only last week, as a representative