"Very good, sir; thank you, sir," said the grocer with animation. "You may count upon my patriotism, sir."
"I count upon it already," said Wayne, and passed out into the gathering night.
The grocer put the box of dates back in its place.
"What a nice fellow he is!" he said. "It's odd how often they are nice. Much nicer than those as are all right."
Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist's shop, unmistakably wavering.
"What a weakness it is!" he muttered. "I have never got rid of it from childhood—the fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich, he is romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not—no, he is not supernatural. But the chemist! All the other shops stand in Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land. Look at those great burning bowls of colour. It must be from them that God paints the sunsets. It is superhuman, and the superhuman is all the more uncanny when it is beneficent. That is the root of the fear of God. I am afraid. But I must be a man and enter."
He was a man, and entered. A short, dark young man was behind the counter with spectacles, and greeted him with a bright but entirely business-like smile.
"A fine evening, sir," he said.
"Fine indeed, strange Father," said Adam, stretching his hands somewhat forward. "It is on such clear and mellow nights that your shop is most itself. Then they appear most perfect, those moons of green and gold and crimson, which from afar oft guide the pilgrim of pain and sickness to this house of merciful witchcraft."
"Can I get you anything?" asked the chemist.