"My dear Harding, you don't mind my interrupting you?" And he envied his friend's interest in his manuscripts when the writer put them away.
"You are not disturbing me; my secretary didn't come to-day, and everything is habit. I can no longer write except by dictation."
"If I had known that I would have called in the morning."
"Again some drama in which Evelyn Innes is concerned," Harding said to himself.
"Harding, I have come to ask your advice; you'll give me the very best. But you will have to hear the whole story."
"Well, I am a story-teller, and like to hear stories."
Owen told him how he had met Ulick Dean at Innes', and had invited him to stop at Berkeley Square, and how gradually the idea that he could make use of Ulick in order to tempt Evelyn back to the stage had come into his mind. Anything to save her from religion, from Monsignor.
Owen caught Harding looking at him from under his shaggy eyebrows, and anger had begun to colour his cheeks when Harding said:
"Don't you remember, Asher, coming here a couple of years ago, and—"
"Yes, I know. You predicted that Ulick Dean and I would become friends, and you are right; we did."