or...." He had the air of wishing to be amiable, of wishing, even, to please me by proving that he was aware of my identity.
"Oh," I said, a little loftily, "I haven't any message, I've only come to interview you." An expression of dismay sharpened the lines of his face.
"To...." he began, "but I've never allowed--" He recovered himself sharply, and set the glasses vigorously on his nose; at last he had found the right track.

"Oh, I remember now," he said, "I hadn't looked at it in that way." The whole thing grated on my self-love and I became, in a contained way, furiously angry.

I was impressed with the idea that the man was only a puppet in the hands of Fox and de Mersch, and that lot.

And he gave himself these airs of enormous distance.

I, at any rate, was clean-handed in the matter; I hadn't any axe to grind.
"Ah, yes," he said, hastily, "you are to draw my portrait--as Fox put it.