“My dear Rickman, that’s where you make the mistake.  You don’t appear at all.”  He smiled with urbane tolerance of the error.  “The editor, as you know, is solely responsible for unsigned reviews.”

So far Jewdwine had come off well.  He had always a tremendous advantage in his hereditary manners; however right you had been to start with, his imperturbable refinement put you grossly in the wrong.  And at this point Rickman gave himself away.

“What’s the good of that?” said he, “if young Paterson believes I wrote them?”

“Young Paterson isn’t entitled to any belief in the matter.”

“But—­he knew.”

There was a shade of genuine annoyance on Jewdwine’s face.

“Oh of course, if you’ve told him that you were the author.  That’s rather awkward for you, but it’s hardly my fault.  I’m sorry, Rickman, but you really are a little indiscreet.”

“I wish I could explain your behaviour in the same way.”

“Come, since you’re so keen on explanations, how do you propose to explain your own?  I gave you certain instructions, and what right had you to go beyond them, not to say against them?”

“What earthly right had you to make me say the exact opposite of what I did say?  But I didn’t go against your instructions.  Here they are.”

He produced them.  “You’ll see that you gave me a perfectly free hand as to space.”

Jewdwine looked keenly at him.  “You knew perfectly well what I meant.  And you took advantage of—­of a trifling ambiguity in my phrasing, to do—­as you would say—­the exact opposite.  That was hardly what I expected of you.”

As he spoke Jewdwine drew his shawl up about his waist, thus delicately drawing attention to his enfeebled state.  The gesture seemed to convict Rickman of taking advantage not only of his phrase but of his influenza, behaviour superlatively base.

“I can give you a perfectly clear statement of the case.  You carefully suppressed my friend and you boomed your own for all you were worth.  Naturally, I reversed your judgment.  Of course, if you had told me you wanted to do a little log-rolling on your own account, I should have been only too delighted—­but I always understood that you disapproved of the practice.”

“So I do.  Paterson isn’t a friend of mine.”

“He’s your friend’s friend then.  I think Mr. Maddox might have been left to look after his own man.”

Rickman rose hastily, as if he were no longer able to sit still and bear it.

“Jewdwine,” he said, and his voice had the vibration which the master had once found so irresistible.  “Have you read young Paterson’s poems?”

“Yes.  I’ve read them.”

“And what is your honest—­your private opinion of them?”

“I’m not a fool, Rickman.  My private opinion of them is the same as yours.”

“What an admission!”

“But,” said Jewdwine suavely, “that’s not the sort of opinion my public—­the public that pays for Metropolis—­pays to have.”