“Quite a contrast,” said I, glancing from the one room to the other.
“My architect is a crank on sanitation,” he explained, from his lounge.
I noted that the windows were huge—to admit floods of light—and that they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure air supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room would have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, it was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance of common-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.
Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. “How do you account for the steadiness of Textile, Langdon?” I asked, returning to the carved sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.
“I don't account for it,” was his languid, uninterested reply.
“Any of your people under the market?”
“It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?” he replied.
“I know that,” I admitted. “But why doesn't it drop?”
“Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,” suggested he. “Your followers have the habit of believing implicitly whatever you say.”
“Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now,” I pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.