'Not at all. It is merely a business-like speculation. You risk your life, and we pay you. Your life goes up in market-value; we pay you more. Do you accept?'
'Yes.'
'That is right. I have the agreement ready in my desk for you to sign. Personally speaking, I think they might have offered you more, but you have the publishers clamouring for a book, and I suppose you will represent Le Pays as well as ourselves.'
'Yes; I telegraphed to them from Hull. But I am quite content; in fact, it is more than I expected. I will make a good thing out of it.'
'We shall,' observed the editor, with a keen smile, 'be having you on the turf when you come back, or launching into ... matrimony.'
'Both amusements,' suggested Trist coolly, 'being so eminently calculated to forward the career of a special war-correspondent.'
The editor was busy collecting various papers that lay in apparent disorder on his desk—telegrams, foreign and English; 'flimsies' from the news agencies and Lloyd's; printed matter and manuscript.
'No, Trist,' he said, without looking up; 'we cannot have you marrying yet. The warlike public cannot do without you, my boy.'
'It is wonderful,' murmured Trist ambiguously, 'what we can do without when we try. I am not, however, going to do without something to eat. I will go along to the club and dine now. You will be here when I come back?'
'I shall be here until two in the morning,' returned the journalist.