of England's literary past he had grown humble. The song of 'Dollars'
was less clamorous than the echo of the ocean in the heart of a
sea-shell. When he wrote, which was seldom, he approached his
paper-littered desk as an artist does his canvas. It was the medium by
which he might gain a modest niche in the Hall of the Immortals--or,
failing that, his soul at least would be enriched by the sincerity of
his endeavour.

In that highly artistic frame of mind he suddenly secured the _entrée_
into London Society. For some reason, as unaccountable as the reverse,
a wave of popularity for Americans was breaking against the oak doors,
and he was carried in on the crest. The result was not ennobling. The
dormant instinct of satire leaped to life and the idealist became the
jester.

But then he was twenty-six and most agreeably susceptible to hap-hazard
influence. Being a Bostonian, he acquitted himself with creditable
_savoir faire_; and being an American, his appreciation of the
ridiculous saved him from the quagmire of snobbery, though he made many
friends and dined regularly with august people, whose family trees were
so rich in growth that they lived in perpetual gloom from the foliage.

Lady Durwent's dinner-party had been an expedition into the artistic
fakery of London, and he would have dismissed the whole affair as a
stimulating and amusing diversion from the ultra-aristocratic rut if
the personality of Elise Durwent had not remained with him like a
haunting melody.

He looked at his watch. 'By Jove!' he muttered; 'it's nine o'clock;'
and hurriedly completing his ablutions, he dressed and descended to