A few mornings later, in his post, whose proportions grew daily nobler and more imposing¹, Henry found a letter from Mark Snyder. 'I have been detained in America by illness,' wrote Mark in his rapid, sprawling², inexcusable hand, 'and am only just back. I wonder whether you have come to any decision about the matter which we discussed when you called here. I see you took my advice and went to Onions Winter. If you could drop in to-morrow at noon or a little after, I have something to show you which ought to interest you.' And then there was a postscript³: 'My congratulations on your extraordinary success go without saying.'  
After Henry had deciphered this invitation, he gave a glance at the page as a whole, which had the air of having been penned by Planchette in a state of violent hysteria, and he said to himself: 'It's exactly like Snyder, that is. He's a clever chap. He knows what he's up to. As to my choosing Onions Winter, yes, of course it was due to him.'
 
Henry was simple, but he was not a fool. He was modest and diffident, but, as is generally the case with modest and diffident persons, there existed, somewhere within the recesses⁴ of his consciousness, a very good conceit⁵ of himself. He had already learnt, the trout⁶, to look up through the water from his hole and compare the skill of the various anglers on the bank who were fishing for the rise. And he decided⁷ that morning, finally: 'Snyder shall catch me.' His previous decision to the same effect, made under the influence of the personal magnetism⁸ of Miss Foster, had been annulled⁹ only the day before. And the strange thing was that it had been annulled because of Miss Foster's share in it, and in consequence of the interview in Home and Beauty. For the more Henry meditated¹⁰ upon that interview the less he liked it. He could not have defined its offence in his eyes, but the offence was nevertheless there. And, further, the interview seemed now scarcely a real interview. Had it dealt with any other celebrity¹¹, it would have been real enough, but in Henry's view Henry was different. He was only an imitation celebrity, and Miss Foster's production was an imitation interview. The entire enterprise, from the moment when he gave her Sir George's lead pencil to write with, to the moment when he gave her his own photograph out of the frame on the drawing-room mantelpiece, had been a pretence¹², and an imposition on the public. Surely if the public knew...! And then, 'pretty suburban¹³ home'! It wasn't ugly, the house in Dawes Road; indeed, he esteemed¹⁴ it rather a nice sort of a place, but 'pretty suburban home' meant—well, it meant the exact opposite of Dawes Road: he was sure of that. As for Miss Foster, he suspected, he allowed himself to suspect, he audaciously whispered when he was alone in a compartment¹⁵ on the Underground, that Miss Foster was a pushing little thing. A reaction had set in against Flossie Brighteye.
 
And yet, when he called upon Mark Snyder for the purpose of being caught, he was decidedly piqued¹⁶, he was even annoyed, not to find her in her chair in the outer room. 'She must have known I was coming,' he reflected swiftly. 'No, perhaps she didn't. The letter was not dictated¹⁷.... But then it was press-copied; I am sure of that by the smudges on it. She must certainly have known I was coming.' And, despite the verdict that she was a pushing young thing, Henry felt it to be in the nature of a personal grievance¹⁸ that she was not always waiting for him there, in that chair, with her golden locks and her smile and her tight bodice, whenever he cared to look in. His right to expect her presence seemed part of his heritage as a man, and it could not be challenged without disturbing the very foundations of human society. He did not think these thoughts clearly as he crossed the outer room into the inner under the direction of Miss Foster's unexciting colleague, but they existed vaguely¹⁹ and furtively²⁰ in his mind. Had anyone suggested that he cared twopence whether Miss Foster was there or not, he would have replied with warm sincerity²¹ that he did not care three halfpence, nor two straws, nor a bilberry, nor even a jot²².
 
'Well,' cried Mark Snyder, with his bluff²³ and jolly habit of beginning interviews in the middle, and before the caller had found opportunity to sit down. 'All you want now is a little bit of judicious²⁴ engineering!' And Mark's rosy²⁵ face said: 'I'll engineer you.'
 
Upon demand Henry produced the agreement with Onions Winter, and he produced it with a shamed countenance²⁶. He knew that Mark Snyder would criticise²⁷ it.
 
'Worse than I expected,' Mr. Snyder observed. 'Worse than I expected. A royalty²⁸ of twopence in the shilling is all right. But why did you let him off the royalty on the first five thousand copies? You call yourself a lawyer! Listen, young man. I have seen the world, but I have never seen a lawyer who didn't make a d——d fool of himself when it came to his own affairs. Supposing Love in Babylon sells fifty thousand—which it won't; it won't go past forty—you would have saved my ten per cent. commission by coming to me in the first place, because I should have got you a royalty on the first five thousand. See?'
 
'But you weren't here,' Henry put in.
 
'I wasn't here! God bless my soul! Little Geraldine Foster would have had the sense to get that!'
 
(So her name was Geraldine.)
 
'It isn't the money,' Mark Snyder proceeded. 'It's the idea of Onions Winter playing his old game with new men. And then I see you've let yourself in for a second book on the same terms, if he chooses to take it. That's another trick of his. Look here,' Mr. Snyder smiled persuasively²⁹, 'I'll thank you to go right home and get that second book done. Make it as short as you can. When that's out of the way—— Ah!' He clasped his hands in a sort of ecstasy³⁰.
 
'I will,' said Henry obediently. But a dreadful apprehension³¹ which had menaced him for several weeks past now definitely seized him.
 
'And I perceive further,' said Mr. Snyder, growing sarcastic³², 'that in case Mr. Onions Winter chooses to copyright the book in America, you are to have half-royalties on all copies sold over there. Now about America,' Mark continued after an impressive pause, at the same time opening a drawer and dramatically producing several paper-covered volumes therefrom. 'See this—and this—and this—and this! What are they? They're pirated editions of Love in Babylon, that's what they are. You didn't know? No, of course not. I'm told that something like a couple of hundred thousand copies have been sold in America up to date. I brought these over with me as specimens³³.'
 
'Then Onions Winter didn't copyright——'
 
'No, sir, he didn't. That incredible ass³⁴ did not. He's just issued what he calls an authorized³⁵ edition there at half a dollar, but what will that do in the face of this at twenty cents, and this wretched pamphlet at ten cents?' Snyder fingered the piracies

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