Drake laughed in reply.

‘The vivisectionists,’ said Fielding, ’may cite you as proof of the painlessness of their work.’

’It is my character that suffers the knife.  I fancy the editor would prefer to call the operation a post-mortem.’

Fielding warmed to his new acquaintance.  Whisky and potass helped them to discover common friends, about whom Fielding supplied information with a flavour of acid in his talk which commended him to Drake; it bit without malice.  Mallinson’s name was mentioned.

‘You have read his autobiography?’ asked Fielding.

‘No; but I have read his novel.’

’That’s what I mean.  Most men wait till they have achieved a career before they write their autobiographies.  He anticipates his.  It’s rather characteristic of the man, I think.’

They drove from the club together in a hansom.  Opposite to his rooms in St. James’s Street Fielding got out.

‘Good-night,’ he said, and took a step towards the door.

A lukewarm curiosity which had been stirring in Drake during the latter part of the evening prompted him to a question now that he saw the opportunity to satisfy it disappearing.

‘You know the Le Mesuriers?’ he asked.

Fielding laughed.  ‘Already?’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then you are not acquainted with the lady?’

‘No; that’s what I’m asking.  What is Miss Le Mesurier like?’

’She is more delightfully surprising than even I had imagined.  Otherwise she’s difficult to describe; a bald enumeration of features would be rank injustice.’

Drake’s curiosity responded to the flick.

‘One might fit them together with a little trouble,’ he suggested.

‘The metaphor of a puzzle is not inapt,’ replied Fielding, as he opened his door.  ‘Good-night!’ and he went in.

Half-way down Pall Mall Drake was smitten by a sudden impulse.  The fog had cleared from the streets; he looked up at the sky.  The night was moonless but starlit, and very clear.  He lifted the trap, spoke to the cabman, and in a few minutes was driving southwards across Westminster Bridge.

It was the chance recollection of a phrase dropped by Conway during dinner which sent him in this untimely scurry to Elm-tree Hill.  ’As distant as El Dorado, and as desirable.’  The sentence limned with precision the impression which London used to produce upon Drake.  The sight of it touched upon some single chord of fancy in a nature otherwise prosaic, of which the existence was unsuspected by his few companions and unrealised by himself.