"I don't mind. Well now, see here; I've got to do it and I can't find anything to write about."
"With all London before you?"
"I know, but when I start to think it all gets behind me. I want you to start me with some idea; you're full of ideas and you know the ropes."
They had reached the flat, and the lady with ideas ushered him in.
The sitting-room was in a scheme of black with Japanese effects; she offered cigarettes, lit one herself, and tea was brought in.
Then the hypnotism began.
The fact that she was a "famous authoress" would not have mattered a button to Bobby yesterday; to-day, on his new strange road, it lent her a charm that completed the fascination of her wondrous eyes. They seemed wild in the street, but when she looked at one intensively they were wonderful. Plots were forgotten, and in the twilight Bobby's full, musical voice might have been heard discussing literature—with long pauses.
"Dear old thing.... Is that cushion comfy?... Oh, bother the girl and the tea-things!... Just put your head so—so...."
He had been hooked twenty times by girls and pulled off the hook by parents or been thrown back by the fisherwoman on inspecting his bank balance, but he had never been hooked like this before, for Julia had no parents to speak of; she was above bank balances, and her grip was of iron where passion was concerned, and publishers. Her publishers could have told you that by the way she gripped her rights when they tried to cheat her of them, for, despite her wondrous eyes and wild air and the fact that she was a genius, she was practical as well as tenacious in hold.
Then, at the end of the séance, Bobby found himself leaving the flat a semi-tied-up man. He couldn't remember whether he had proposed to her or she to him, or whether either of them had proposed or actually accepted, but there was a tie between them, a tie slight enough and not binding in any court; less an engagement than an attachment formed, so he told himself.