Chapter 5 - Page 2

opinion, disengage the answer - those are the real acts of homage."

Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book away. "Ah but you
mustn't take me for a reviewer."

"Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You
came down to perform a little act of sympathy, and so, I may
confide to you, did I. Let us perform our little act together.
These pages overflow with the testimony we want: let us read them
and taste them and interpret them. You'll of course have perceived
for yourself that one scarcely does read Neil Paraday till one
reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an extraordinary full
tone, and it's only when you expose it confidently to that test
that you really get near his style. Take up your book again and
let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth
chapter. If you feel you can't do it justice, compose yourself to
attention while I produce for you - I think I can! - this scarcely
less admirable ninth."

Mr. Morrow gave me a straight look which was as hard as a blow
between the eyes; he had turned rather red, and a question had
formed itself in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as
if he had uttered it: "What sort of a damned fool are YOU?" Then
he got up, gathering together his hat and gloves, buttoning his
coat, projecting hungrily all over the place the big transparency
of his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet Street and somehow made
the actual spot distressingly humble: there was so little for it
to feed on unless he counted the blisters of our stucco or saw his
way to do something with the roses. Even the poor roses were
common kinds. Presently his eyes fell on the manuscript from which
Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay on the bench.
As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant,
as if it gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it.
Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod at it and a vague thrust of his
umbrella. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's a plan - a secret."

"A secret!" There was an instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow
made another movement. I may have been mistaken, but it affected
me as the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the
manuscript, and this led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab
which may very well have seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent,
and which at any rate left Mr. Paraday's two admirers very erect,
glaring at each other while one of them held a bundle of papers
well behind him. An instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly,
as if he had really carried something off with him. To reassure
myself, watching his broad back recede, I only grasped my
manuscript the tighter. He went to the back door of the house, the
one he had come