As he spoke, he rose and looked significantly at his watch.
'But,' he added, after a moment's pause, 'if Mrs. Wylie is in town, you might, perhaps, go up to Suffolk Mansions yourself. The little attention would be kindly taken.'
'I will,' answered the editor heartily. He rose also, and took his hat from a peg behind the door. 'But we will, of course, take it for granted that the necessity will never arise. I don't like to feel as if I were sending a fellow where I would not go myself ... and paying him for it.'
'No,' said Trist in his gently confident way. 'The necessity will never arise, you need not fear that! I must be going—the Strand will be crowded with theatre-goers.'
He held out his hand, but the great journalist waved it aside.
'I am going,' he said, 'to Charing Cross with you. Unless you object——?'
'I shall be very glad,' was the unemotional reply, delivered as a mere matter of mechanical politeness. At times Theo Trist betrayed that his indifference to the smaller sentiments of social intercourse was cultivated and slightly artificial.
'There is no one else going to see you off?' inquired the editor.
'No one.'
'Then I will go with you.'