CHAPTER I

In London, the greatest metropolis of the world, the smallest
affairs are often discussed with more keenness than things of
national importance,--and it is by no means uncommon to find
society more interested in the doings of some particular man or
woman than in the latest and most money-milking scheme of
Government finance. In this way it happened that about a year
after Innocent had, like a small boat in a storm, broken loose
from her moorings and drifted out to the wide sea, everybody who
was anybody became suddenly thrilled with curiosity concerning the
unknown personality of an Author. There are so many Authors
nowadays that it is difficult to get up even a show of interest in
one of them,--everybody "writes"--from Miladi in Belgravia, who
considers the story of her social experiences, expressed in
questionable grammar, quite equal to the finest literature, down
to the stable-boy who essays a "prize" shocker for a penny
dreadful. But this latest aspirant to literary fame had two
magnetic qualities which seldom fail to arouse the jaded spirit of
the reading public,--novelty and mystery, united to that scarce
and seldom recognised power called genius. He or she had produced
a Book. Not an ephemeral piece of fiction,--not a "Wells" effort
of imagination under hydraulic pressure--not an hysterical
outburst of sensual desire and disappointment such as moves the
souls of demimondaines and dressmakers,--not even a "detective"
sensation--but just a Book--a real Book, likely to live as long as
literature itself. It was something in the nature of a marvel,
said those who knew what they were talking about, that such a book
should have been written at all in these modern days. The "style"
of it was exquisite and scholarly--quaint, expressive, and all-