prints and drawings. At the end furthest from the door of admission was
a tall desk, of great extent, at which the person using it could write
only in the erect posture of a clerk in a counting-house; and stretched
from the entrance to this structure was a wide plain band of crimson
cloth, as straight as a garden-path and almost as long, where, in his
mind's eye, Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during vexed
hours--hours, that is, of admirable composition. The servant gave him a
coat, an old jacket with a hang of experience, from a cupboard in the
wall, retiring afterwards with the garment he had taken off. Paul Overt
welcomed the coat; it was a coat for talk, it promised confidences--having
visibly received so many--and had tragic literary elbows. "Ah we're
practical--we're practical!" St. George said as he saw his visitor look
the place over. "Isn't it a good big cage for going round and round? My
wife invented it and she locks me up here every morning."

Our young man breathed--by way of tribute--with a certain oppression.
"You don't miss a window--a place to look out?"

"I did at first awfully; but her calculation was just. It saves time, it
has saved me many months in these ten years. Here I stand, under the eye
of day--in London of course, very often, it's rather a bleared old
eye--walled in to my trade. I can't get away--so the room's a fine
lesson in concentration. I've learnt the lesson, I think; look at that
big bundle of proof and acknowledge it." He pointed to a fat roll of
papers, on one of the tables, which had not been undone.

"Are you bringing out another--?" Paul asked in a tone the fond
deficiencies of which he didn't recognise till his companion burst out
laughing, and indeed scarce even then.