As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse’s thin cheek, and his own reflected it in a richer glow of shame. “I mean—I mean—” he stammered helplessly.
“No, I haven’t,” said Vyse; “but it will be awfully jolly finding out.”
There was a pause, groping and desperate on Betton’s part, sardonically calm on his visitor’s.
“You—you’ve given up writing altogether?” Betton continued.
“Yes; we’ve changed places, as it were.” Vyse paused. “But about these letters—you dictate the answers?”
“Lord, no! That’s the reason why I said I wanted somebody—er—well used to writing. I don’t want to have anything to do with them—not a thing! You’ll have to answer them as if they were written to you—” Betton pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the drawers of his writing-table.
“Here—this kind of rubbish,” he said, tossing a packet of letters onto Vyse’s knee.
“Oh—you keep them, do you?” said Vyse simply.
“I—well—some of them; a few of the funniest only.”
Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was glancing over them Betton again caught his own reflection in the glass, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor. It occurred to him for the first time that his high-coloured well-fed person presented the image of commercial rather than of intellectual achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of “Diadems and Faggots”—and he wondered why.