Paul swung into a new train of thought. He considered the cost of it all. Why, when he had refused the first cigar, Judson had said he never refused a half-crown smoke. Half a crown for a cigar!—the thing was monstrous to evangelical Paul. The smokes of the dinner alone would have kept a catechist in India for a year! Probably the wines would have paid the annual salary of a white missionary in China. And with every tick of the clock, a heathen soul passed into eternity. How often he had said it! What, then, was he doing among such things? What part had he in such extravagance? "One is your Master, even Christ."
Paul sighed, and reached for his diary. "The feast was wonderful (he wrote), extraordinarily beautiful I thought.... But..." Then he went to bed.
Wonder on wonders. The morning's post brought him a letter from the editor of The Granta, accepting, magnanimously, a short story of an imaginative nature that he had placed in Egypt with the aid of a Baedeker. The editor asked, interestedly, if he had been there. He supposed that Paul must have been, for the descriptions were so vivid.
Paul's porridge grew cold. He sat on with the letter in his hand. Donaldson found him so, calling to go with him to a distant lecture. "Hullo," he said, "not finished brekker? You're late again, four!"
"I say," said Paul, "The Granta's taken that yarn of mine about Egypt."
"By Jove, that's topping." Donaldson spoke enviously, staring at him. "But I told you it was jolly good, didn't I?"
"You did," said Paul, "but I say, what do you think Tressor said last night about my verse?"
"Can't say," said Donaldson.
Then Paul told him.
His friend whistled. "Damn it all, Paul," he said—"by the way, let me call you 'Paul,' may I?—I should chuck all those preaching and praying stunts of yours now."