'Oh, about yourself, and your work, and your plans, and all that sort of thing. The usual sort of thing, you know.'
'For a newspaper?'
She nodded.
He took the meaning. He was famous, then! People—that vague, vast entity known as 'people'—wished to know about him. He had done something. He had arrested attention—he, Henry, son of the draper's manager; aged twenty-three; eater of bacon for breakfast every morning like ordinary men; to be observed daily in the Underground, and daily in the A.B.C. shop in Chancery Lane.
'You are thinking of Love in Babylon?' he inquired.
She nodded again. (The nod itself was an enchantment. 'She's just about my age,' said Henry to himself. And he thought, without realizing that he thought: 'She's lots older than me practically. She could twist me round her little finger.')
'Oh, Mr. Knight, she recommenced at a tremendous rate, sitting up in the great client's chair, 'you must let me tell you what I thought of Love in Babylon! It's the sweetest thing! I read it right off, at one go, without looking up! And the title! How did you think of it? Oh! if I could write, I would write a book like that. Old Spring Onions has produced it awfully well, too, hasn't he? It's a boom, a positive, unmistakable boom! Everyone's talking about you, Mr. Knight. Personally, I tell everyone I meet to read your book.'
Henry mildly protested against this excess of enthusiasm.
'I must,' Miss Foster explained. 'I can't help it.'