Humphrey, in the Paris office of _The Day_, on the fourth floor of an apartment building in the Rue le Peletier, sat dreaming of all that had happened in the past six months. Wonderful months had they been to him! They had altered his whole perception of things. Here, in a new world and a new city, he was beginning to see things in a truer proportion. Fleet Street receded into the far perspective as something quite small and unimportant; the men themselves, even, seemed narrow-minded and petty, incapable of thinking more deeply than the news of the day demanded.
Humphrey, from the heights of his room in Paris, began to see how broad the world was, that it was finer to deal with nations than individuals, and from his view Fleet Street appeared to him in the same relation as Easterham had appeared to him in London.
The clock struck five. Rivers and Neckinger and Selsey would be going into the conference now in Ferrol's room to discuss the contents of the paper.
"Anything big from Paris?" some one would be asking, or "What about Berlin?"... And he knew that every night they looked towards Paris, where amazing things happened, and he, Humphrey Quain, was Paris. That splendid thought thrilled him to the greatest endeavour. He was _The Day's_ watchman in Paris, not only of all the news that happened in the capital, but of all the happenings in the whole territory of France.
A pile of cuttings from the morning's papers were on his desk. Here was a leading article on the Franco-German relations from the _Echo de Paris_--an important leading article, obviously inspired by the Quai D'Orsay. There was a two-column account of the Hanon case--an extraordinary murder in Lyons which English readers were following with great interest. There was a budget of "fait-divers," those astonishing events in which the fertility of the Paris journalist's imagination rises to its highest point. They supplied the "human interest." He had received a wire from London to interview a famous French actress, who was going to play in a London theatre, and that had kept him busy for the afternoon. The morning had been devoted to reading every Paris paper.
At five o'clock Dagneau arrived with the evening papers, bought from the fat old woman who kept the kiosk outside the Café Riche. He let himself into the flat with a latch-key, and appeared before Humphrey, a young man, immaculately dressed, with a light beard fringing his fat cheeks. Humphrey could never quite overcome the oddness of having a bearded man as his junior. Dagneau was only twenty-two, but he had grown a beard since he was twenty; that was how youths played at being men. Humphrey called Dagneau "the lamb."
