given her. She had scrawled, as a specimen, a few bars at the end of
her note, mystic, mocking musical signs which had no sense for her
correspondent. The whole letter testified to a restless but rather
pointless desire to remain in communication with him. In answering
her, however, which he did that night before going to bed, it was on
this bright possibility of their collaboration, its advantages for
the future of each of them, that Baron principally expatiated. He
spoke of this future with an eloquence of which he would have
defended the sincerity, and drew of it a picture extravagantly rich.
The next morning, as he was about to settle himself to tasks for some
time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a
relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had
become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he
habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was
agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent
request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately come down and see
him. This represented, for poor Baron, whose funds were very low,
another morning sacrificed, but somehow it didn't even occur to him
that he might impose his own time upon the editor of the Promiscuous,
the keeper of the keys of renown. He had some of the plasticity of
the raw contributor. He gave the muse another holiday, feeling she
was really ashamed to take it, and in course of time found himself in
Mr. Locket's own chair at Mr. Locket's own table--so much nobler an
expanse than the slippery slope of the davenport--considering with
quick intensity, in the white flash of certain words just brought out
by his host, the quantity of happiness, of emancipation that might
reside in a hundred pounds.

Yes, that was what it meant: Mr. Locket, in the twenty-four hours,
had discovered so much in Sir Dominick's literary remains that his