"Why, Prince; when he was in Paris. Didn't you read it to me?"

I remembered.

"Do you know," he went on, "I've been straight as a string--ever since.
And I'm going to keep so."

"I should hope so, indeed."

"Whatever I may have been before. But I think it's better for a young
fellow to dash in and find out than to keep standing on the edge and
just wonder."

"Well, I don't know, Johnny," I returned soberly. "I'm going to be
married myself, next month. And I expect to go to my bride just as
pure--"

"No preaching," said Johnny. "The slate's wiped clean. Adele's all right
for me, and I'm all right to her."

He adjusted his hat, making the two sides of the brim level.

"We're going to move shortly," he stated. "The business can go on where
it is, for a while, but we're going to live somewhere else."

Perhaps in the city itself, it appeared; perhaps in some suburb toward
the north. But no longer in one to the west. Johnny was developing some
such scent for social values and some such feeling for impending
topographical changes as had begun to stir the great houses that were
grouped about the Princes.

"So you're the next one?" he said presently. "It's the only life. Good
luck to you. And who's going to see you through? Prince?"

"Yes--'my friend.' I'm glad you remember him."

"Oh yes; I can remember him when I try. But I don't try very hard or
very often. Back in this country?"

"He is."

"What's he doing?" Johnny fixed his hard blue eyes firmly on me.

I was sorry to have no very definite answer. "He has been in the East
lately. He'll be back here in time for me."

"Well," said Johnny darkly; and that was all.

IV

Raymond's "tower" was not static, but peripatetic. Early in his second
summer abroad it was standing among the Dutch windmills for a brief
season; and when he learned that I was to have a short vacation in
England--the only quarter of the Old World I ever cared for--he left it
altogether for a fortnight and came across from Flushing to see me.

Two points immediately made themselves clear. Firstly, he was viewing
the world through literature--through works of fiction in some cases,
through guide-books in more. Everything was a spectacle, with himself
quite outside as an onlooker; and nothing was a spectacle until it had
been ranged and appraised in print. Secondly, if he was outside of
things, America was still farther outside; it existed as a remote
province not yet drawn into the