So many men need an audience. Herbert Minks was a
fine audience, attentive, delicately responsive, sympathetic,
understanding, and above all--silent. He did not leak. Also, his
applause was wise without being noisy. Another rare quality he
possessed was that he was honest as the sun. To prevaricate, even by
gesture, or by saying nothing, which is the commonest form of untruth,
was impossible to his transparent nature. He might hedge, but he could
never lie. And he was 'friend,' so far as this was possible between
employer and employed, because a pleasant relationship of years'
standing had established a bond of mutual respect under conditions of
business intimacy which often tend to destroy it.
Just now he was very important into the bargain, for he had a secret
from his wife that he meant to divulge only at the proper moment. He
had known it himself but a few hours. The leap from being secretary in
one of Henry Rogers's companies to being that prominent gentleman's
confidential private secretary was, of course, a very big one. He
hugged it secretly at first alone. On the journey back from the City
to the suburb where he lived, Minks made a sonnet on it. For his
emotions invariably sought the safety valve of verse. It was a wiser
safety valve for high spirits than horse-racing or betting on the
football results, because he always stood to win, and never to lose.
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