The door swung open, and a masculine voice—a little more tenor than Brookes's bass tones—called, “Brookes, come in. Do you have your colleague with you?”

He was a superlative showman and, if his career ended at the age of forty-five in an acte gratuit, he had, after all, been compared to André Gide.

The dialogue was brought to a sudden stop by the frantic yell of the juvenile pledge of their affections, whose years had not yet reached two figures; a compact little iron-bound box had fallen on his toe, and the poor little urchin’s pilliloo, pilliloo, was pitiful.

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