daughter of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known
her only one winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was
that he had no money, and that she possessed so much of it that,
unless he could show some unusual quality of mind or character,
his asking her to marry him, from his own point of view at least,
was quite impossible. Of course, he knew that no one could love
her as he did, that no one so truly wished for her happiness, or
would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him it did not
seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was not
able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education
and charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came
from New York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen
Carey he had with him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That
was all he possessed in the world; and unless the magazines
bought his stories there was no prospect of his getting any more.

Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well,
it was easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to
entertain modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate,
Philip calculated he could stay three months. But he found that
to know London well enough to be able to live there on three
sovereigns a day you had first to spend so many five-pound notes
in getting acquainted with London that there were no sovereigns
left. At the end of one month he had just enough money to buy him
a second-class passage back to New York, and he was as far from
Helen as ever.

Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor