"A hammock in London!" cried Humphrey; "I envy you! Think of our Clifford's Inn."
"I really don't know how you people can live on the doorsteps of your offices. I'm sure it's not good for you. Anyway, Kenneth's giving it up."
"I hadn't heard of it before your letter."
"It was only settled a few days ago. Grahams, the publishers, liked his last book well enough to offer him a good advance; and the book's sold in America—he's got enough to get a year's start in the country, and so he's going down there to write only the things he wants to."
Humphrey smiled in his cocksure way. "Aha! he'll soon get sick of it, Miss Carr."
Elizabeth Carr's fingers strayed into the loops of her amethyst necklace; the light shone on the violet and blue gems as she gathered them into a little heap, and let them fall again. Her brows hinted at a frown for a moment, and then they became level again.
"Nothing would make you give up Fleet Street, I suppose?" she asked.
"No ... the fever's in me," he said. "I couldn't live without it."
"Are you so wrapped up in it?"
"Well," said Humphrey, "I suppose I am. It's rather fine, you know, the way things are done. You ought to go through a newspaper office and see it at work ... all sorts of people, each of them working daily with only one aim—to-morrow's paper...."