He did not go to Elizabeth that night: he walked, in a dream, past Knightsbridge and up Piccadilly, contemplating the fulfilment of all his dreams. Everything seemed possible now. He was a young man—and Ferrol was going to give him Paris; he was a young man—and Elizabeth had given him her love. The sequence of this thought was significant.

It would be very fine to tell her.... At last he was lifted out of the rut into a field of new endeavour. From Paris the path led to other cities, of course—to Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. One day he would see them all. Life became at once very broad and open.

He walked on, an un-noteworthy figure in the throng of people that moved along Piccadilly, his thoughts surging with the prospects of his new life.

"Humphrey Quain ... Paris Correspondent of The Day."

He murmured that to himself. Glorious title! Splendid Ferrol. How noble was this work in Fleet Street, holding out great promises to those who served it well, and sacrificed everything on its altar. How could one abandon a calling where fortune may change in a moment?

He passed through astonishing ranks of women whose eyes and lips simulated love: one or two of them spoke to him in foreign accents. He passed on across the Circus where the lights of the Variety Theatres made a blur of yellow in the nebulous night.

His steps led him again to Fleet Street, and he walked with the joy of a man treading the soil of his own[278] country. It was always the same when he passed the Griffin: deep satisfaction took hold of him at the sight of the signs in all the buildings, telling of newspapers all the world over, in this narrow Street in which the lives of him and his kind were centred. The fascination of the Street was perpetual. It belonged to him. It belonged to all of them. At every hour of the day and night there were always friends to be met.

He turned into the cheery warmth of the Pen Club—friends everywhere and Fleet Street smiling! There was laughter at the wooden counter, where Larkin was telling some story to a group of men.

"Well, the next day I thought I'd go up and inquire after his lordship's health. The butler was very kind. 'Come in,' he said. 'His lordship's expecting you.' So up I went, thinking I was going to get a fine story—he was supposed to be dangerously ill in bed, mind you."

Humphrey joined the group and listened. ("Have a drink?" said Larkin, turning to him. "It's my shout.")

"Well," continued Larkin, "when I got to the room, there was his lordship in pants and undervest—you know how fat he is—with dumb-bells in his hands and whirling his arms about like a windmill. 'Do I look like a dying man?' he said, dancing lightly on his toes. 'Go back, young man, and tell your editor what you've seen. Good-morning.'"

"Talking of funny experiences," said one of the others, "I remember—" And so it went on, story after story, of real things happening in the most extraordinary way. It was all this that Humphrey enjoyed, this inter-change of experiences, this telling of stories that were never written in newspapers, that belonged alone to them.
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