"And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked. "I shan't begin to be busy again for another fortnight."
"Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.
"It needn't," he replied. "I am content with what I have."
"Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.
She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers. He was never quite sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift. He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to walk. He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark waters below seemed suddenly like jewels. He made his way to his club because of the sheer impossibility of sleep. He stood on the threshold of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent men. In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy greetings.
"What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled. "He looks as though some one had left him a fortune."
"He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher suggested.
"I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man yawned.
"Dickinson was right," he said. "I've found a new star."
Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by his side. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice again that vague look of tiredness in his face.
"Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by his side.
"A very pleasant one," he replied. "Montavon's party was postponed, but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here. With the exception of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."
"You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"
"Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded. "I may be wrong to ignore the literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to appreciate it have been unsatisfactory. You enjoyed the play, dear?"
"Very much," Letitia acquiesced. "The house was crowded."
She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated. "And that clever woman who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box--Marcia Hannaway. She was with rather a dour-looking man--her publisher, I think Charlie said it was."