almost to constitute hallucination---arose a vision of Flamby Duveen
as she appeared in the secret photographs.

"You have definitely set your hand to the plough?"

"Definitely."

Jules Thessaly advanced, leaning forward across the table. He stared
fixedly at Paul. "To-night," he said, "a new Star is born in the West
and an hour will come when the eyes of all men must be raised to it."

PART SECOND

FLAMBY IN LONDON

I

On a raw winter's morning some six months later Don Courtier walked
briskly out of St. Pancras station, valise in hand, and surveyed a misty
yellow London with friendly eyes. A taxi-driver, hitherto plunged in
unfathomable gloom, met this genial glance and recovered courage. He
volunteered almost cheerfully to drive Don to any spot which he might
desire to visit, an offer which Don accepted in an equally cordial
spirit.

Depositing his valise at the Services Club in Stratford Place, his
modest abode when on leave in London, Don directed the cabman to drive
him to Paul Mario's house in Chelsea.

"Go a long way round," he said; "through Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar
Square and up the Mall. I want to see the sights of London Town."

Lying back in the cab he lighted a cigarette and resigned himself to
those pleasant reflections which belong to the holiday mood. For the
Capital of a threatened empire, London looked disappointingly ordinary,
he thought. There seemed to be thousands of pretty women, exquisitely
dressed, thronging the West End thoroughfares; but Don had learned from
experience that this delusion was a symptom associated with leave. Long
absence from feminine society blunts a man's critical faculties, and
Robinson Crusoe must have thought all women beautiful.

There were not so many posters on the hoardings, which deprived the
streets of a characteristic note of colour, but there were conspicuous
encomiums of economy displayed at Oxford Circus which the shopping
crowds along Oxford Street and Regent Street seemed nevertheless to have
overlooked. A large majority of the male population appeared to be in
khaki. The negligible minority not in khaki appeared to be in extremis
or second childhood. Don had heard much of "slackers" but the spectacle
afforded by the street of shops set him wondering where they were all
hiding. With the exception of a number of octogenarians and cripples,
the men in Regent Street wore uniform. They were all accompanied by
lovely women; it was extraord