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XXVII

eeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin’s
Whouse, and one of them, arranged as a parlour, was
comfortable enough for him to invite people to sit in. After
supper, urged perhaps by the impish humour which was the
despair of his friends in Cambridge, Mass., he often asked
Philip and Hayward to come in for a chat. He received them
with elaborate courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the
only two comfortable chairs in the room. Though he did not
drink himself, with a politeness of which Philip recognised
the irony, he put a couple of bottles of beer at Hayward’s el-
bow, and he insisted on lighting matches whenever in the
heat of argument Hayward’s pipe went out. At the begin-
ning of their acquaintance Hayward, as a member of so
celebrated a university, had adopted a patronising attitude
towards Weeks, who was a graduate of Harvard; and when
by chance the conversation turned upon the Greek trage-
dians, a subject upon which Hayward felt he spoke with
authority, he had assumed the air that it was his part to give
information rather than to exchange ideas. Weeks had lis-
tened politely, with smiling modesty, till Hayward finished;
then he asked one or two insidious questions, so innocent in
appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a quandary
they led him, answered blandly; Weeks made a courteous
objection, then a correction of fact, after that a quotation

1 Of Human Bondage