alzac has called the gastronomy of the eye, and
which consists in idling in the streets. But unfortunately for Tristrem,
he was none other than himself. The mere smell of liquor was distasteful
to him, and he was too nervous to be actively inactive. Moreover, as in
September there are never more than four million people in London, his
chance of encountering an acquaintance was slight. Those that he
possessed were among the absent ten thousand. They were in the country,
among the mountains, at the seaside, on the Continent--anywhere, in
fact, except in the neighborhood of Pall Mall. And even had it been
otherwise, Tristrem was not in a mood to suffer entertainment. He had
not the slightest wish to be amused. Wagner might have come to Covent
Garden from the grave to conduct Parsifal in person and Tristrem would
not have so much as bought a stall. He wanted Miss Raritan's address,
and until he got it a comet that bridged the horizon would have left him
incurious as the dead.

On the morrow, with his coffee, there came to him a yellow envelope. The
message was brief, though not precisely to the point "_Uninformed of
Mrs. Raritan's address_," it ran, and the signature was _Meggs_.

For the first time it occurred to Tristrem that Fate was conspiring
against him. It had been idiocy on his part to leave New York before he
had obtained the address; and now that he was in London, it would be
irrational to write to any of her friends--the Wainwarings, for
instance--and hope to get it. He knew the Wainwarings just well enough
to attend a reception if they gave one, and a slighter acquaintance than
that it were idle to describe.

Other friends the girl had in plenty, but to Tristrem they were little
more than shadows. There seemed to be no one to whom he could turn.
Indeed he was sorely perplexed. Since the hour in which he learned that
his father and Viola's were not the same he had been possessed of but
one thought--to see her and kneel at her feet; and in the haste he had
not shown the slightest forethought--he had been too feverishly
energetic to so much as wait till he got her address; and now in the
helter-skelter he had run into a _cul-de-sac_ where he could absolutely
do nothing except sit and bite his thumb. The enforced inactivity was
torturesome as suspense. In his restlessness he determined to retrace
his steps; he would return to New York, he told himself, learn of her
whereabouts, and start afresh. Already he began t