was anxious to have the last fling. Companies of masks with linked
arms and whooping like red Indians swept the streets in crazy
rushes while gusts of cold mistral swayed the gas lights as far as
the eye could reach. There was a touch of bedlam in all this.

Perhaps it was that which made me feel lonely, since I was neither
masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any other way in harmony
with the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely
in a state of sobriety. I had just returned from my second West
Indies voyage. My eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my
memory of my experiences, lawful and lawless, which had their charm
and their thrill; for they had startled me a little and had amused
me considerably. But they had left me untouched. Indeed they were
other men's adventures, not mine. Except for a little habit of
responsibility which I had acquired they had not matured me. I was
as young as before. Inconceivably young--still beautifully
unthinking--infinitely receptive.

You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos and his fight
for a kingdom. Why should I? You don't want to think of things
which you meet every day in the newspapers and in conversation. I
had paid some calls since my return and most of my acquaintance
were legitimists and intensely interested in the events of the
frontier of Spain, for political, religious, or romantic reasons.
But I was not interested. Apparently I was not romantic enough.
Or was it that I was even more romantic than all those good people?
The affair seemed to me commonplace. That man was attending to his
business of a Pretender.

On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table