element to his knowledge of Mrs. Newell's character. He was as ready
to sacrifice his personal vanity in such a cause as he had been, at
the outset of their acquaintance, to sacrifice his professional
pride to the opportunity of knowing her.

When he had accepted the position of "London correspondent" (with an
occasional side-glance at Paris) to the New York _Searchlight_, he
had not understood that his work was to include the obligation of
"interviewing"; indeed, had the possibility presented itself in
advance, he would have met it by unpacking his valise and returning
to the drudgery of his assistant-editorship in New York. But when,
after three months in Europe, he received a letter from his chief,
suggesting that he should enliven the Sunday _Searchlight_ by a
series of "Talks with Smart Americans in London" (beginning, say,
with Mrs. Sam Newell), the change of focus already enabled him to
view the proposal without passion. For his life on the edge of the
great world-caldron of art, politics and pleasure--of that
high-spiced brew which is nowhere else so subtly and variously
compounded--had bred in him an eager appetite to taste of the heady
mixture. He knew he should never have the full spoon at his lips,
but he recalled the peasant-girl in one of Browning's plays, who has
once eaten polenta cut with a knife which has carved an ortolan.
Might not Mrs. Newell, who had so successfully cut a way into the
dense and succulent mass of English society, serve as the knife to
season his polenta?

He had expected, as the result of the interview, to which she
promptly, almost eagerly, assented, no more than the glimpse of
brightly lit vistas which a waiting messenger may catch through open
doors; but instead he had found himself drawn at once into the inner