I rang bell after bell of that gloomy central London district.  You know what happens.  One pulls the knob under the name of the person one seeks—­pulls it three, or, it may be, four times in vain.  One rings the housekeeper’s bell; it reverberates, growing fainter and fainter, gradually stifled by a cavernous subterranean atmosphere.  After an age a head peeps round the opening door, the head of a hopeless anachronism, the head of a widow of early Victorian merit, or of an orphan of incredible age.  One asks for So-and-so—­he’s out; for Williams—­he’s expecting an increase of family, and has gone into the country with madame.  And Waring?  Oh, he’s gone no one knows where, and Johnson who used to live at Number 44 only comes up to town on Tuesdays now.  I exhausted the possibilities of that part of Bloomsbury, the possibilities of variety in the types of housekeepers.  The rest of London divided itself into bands—­into zones.  Between here and Kensington the people that I knew could not be called on after dinner, those who lived at Chiswick and beyond were hyperborean—­one was bound by the exigencies of time.  It was ten o’clock as I stood reflecting on a doorstep—­on Johnson’s doorstep.  I must see somebody, must talk to somebody, before I went to bed in the cheerless room at the club.  It was true I might find a political stalwart in the smoking-room—­but that was a last resort, a desperate and ignominious pis aller.

There was Fox, I should find him at the office.  But it needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual.  I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery—­a free lance of genius.  I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran him to earth.

The Watteau room was further enlivened by the introduction of a scarlet plush couch of sumptuous design.  By its side stood a couple of electric lights.  The virulent green of their shades made the colours of the be-shepherded wall-panels appear almost unearthly, and threw impossible shadows on the deal partition.  Round the couch stood chairs with piles of papers neatly arranged on them; round it, on the floor, were more papers lying like the leaves of autumn that one sings of.  On it lay Fox, enveloped in a Shetland shawl—­a good shawl that was the only honest piece of workmanship in the torn-tawdry place.  Fox was as rubicund as ever, but his features were noticeably peaked and there were heavy lines under his eyes—­lines cast into deep shadow by the light by which he was reading.  I entered unannounced, and was greeted by an indifferent upward glance that changed into one of something like pleasure as he made out my features in the dim light.