The telephone bell rang. "I'll see him now," said Ferrol through the telephone, and Humphrey took that as a signal that the interview was ended. Ferrol shook hands with him, and once more he felt himself the target of those steel-grey eyes that held in them the stern remorselessness of strength.
"Good-looking young man," said Rivers, as the door closed behind Humphrey. "Hope he'll shape all right."
"I hope so," Ferrol echoed.... And he was glad that Rivers had praised Humphrey, for he was pleased with the upright, manly bearing of the lad, the quick intelligence of the face, and he had noticed the frank eyes, the smooth skin and the dark hair that had belonged in the lost years to Margaret.
V
Humphrey came downstairs and out into the street again walking like one in a dream. His interview with Ferrol had lasted barely five minutes, and in those few minutes the whole course of his future life had been determined. His mind was whirling with the suddenness of it all; whirling and whirling round one thought, the thought of three pounds a week. Round this pivot, as a catharine-wheel spins round its pin, the thing of the greatest import revolved brilliantly, shedding its luminous light far into the dark recesses of the future ... he was on The Day. Fleet Street was at his feet.
In that moment a new Humphrey Quain was born, different from the youth who had walked a little timorously into Ferrol's room; he was no longer a lost cipher in the world, he was a unit in the army that marched forwards, with Progress and To-morrow for their watchwords. He felt, suddenly, a great man—Humphrey Quain of The Day, cocksure, self-confident, with ambitions that appalled him when he thought of them in after years.
What would Beaver say? What would old Worthing say...? And there was his aunt, too.