He dragged me almost by force into the drawing-room, where he entertained me courteously.  It was curious to observe how his manner changed in—­I have to use the Boldero jargon—­in the different atmosphere.  He expounded the qualities of his whisky—­a present from old man Jornicroft, a rare blend which just a few “merchantates” (Barbara’s word, he declared, was delicious) in Glasgow and Dundee and here and there a one in the City of London were able to procure.  In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names.  He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song.  On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the standard had appreciated.

“My dear man,” he laughed, in answer to my protest.  “I can afford it.”

For the quarter of an hour that I spent with him in his own drawing-room, he was quite the old Adrian.  I drove to Paddington Station under the influence of his urbanity.  But in the train, and afterwards at home, I was teased by vague apprehensions.  Hitherto I had loosely and playfully qualified his methods of work as lunatic, without a thought as to the exact significance of the term.  Now a horrible thought harassed me.  Had I been precise without knowing it?

Novelists may have their little idiosyncrasies, and the privacy of their working hours deserves respect; but none I have ever heard of are such fearful wildfowl as to need the precautions with which Adrian surrounded himself.  Why should he put himself under lock and key?  Why should he not allow human eye to fall, even from the distance prescribed by good manners, upon his precious manuscript?  Why need he use care so scrupulous as not to expose even torn up bits of rough draft to the ancillary publicity of a waste-paper basket?  Soundness of mind did not lie that way.  The terms in which he alluded to his book were not those of a sane man filled with the joy of his creation.  None of us, not even Doria, knew how the story was progressing.  He had signed a contract with an American editor for serialisation to begin in July.  Here we were in the middle of May, and not a page of manuscript had been delivered.  Doria told Barbara that the editor had been cabling frenziedly.  How much of the story was written?  I recalled his wild talk at Easter about putting into the novel the whole of human life.  I had jested with him, calling it a megalomaniac notion.  But suppose, unwittingly, I had been right?  I thought of the ghastly name physicians give to the malady and shivered.

Suddenly, a day or two afterwards, came news that, to some extent, relieved my mind.

While the Bolderos were at breakfast, a cable arrived from the Editor.  It ran:  “Unless half of manuscript is delivered to-day at London Office will cancel contract.”  Adrian read it, frowned and handed it to Doria.  It seems that in all business matters she had his confidence.