The Prophet of Berkeley Square

by Robert Hichens

“Didn’t you succeed?”

“Not once.”

“Tch! Tch!”

“So at last I was driven to the double life.”

“Then your coachman knows?”

“MacSpillan! No! I took a cab—a four-wheeler—at the corner of the Square, and the name of Minerva Partridge. It’s a silly name, isn’t it?”

She asked the question with earnest anxiety.

“Quite idiotic,” said the Prophet, reassuringly.

“I felt quite sure it was,” she cried, obviously comforted. “Because it came to me so inevitably. I was so perfectly natural—and alone—when I invented it. No one helped me.”

“I assure you,” reiterated the Prophet, “there is no doubt the name is absolutely and entirely idiotic.”