on the small table by his side. Through a little cloud of
tobacco-smoke he was studying his host.

"So you call yourself a Londoner now, my young friend, I suppose," he
remarked, taking pensive note of John's fashionable clothes. "It is a
transformation, beyond a doubt! Is it, I wonder, upon the surface only,
or have you indeed become heart and soul a son of this corrupt city?"

"Whatever I may have become," John grumbled, "it's meant three months of
the hardest work I've ever done!"

Graillot held out his pipe in front of him and blew away a dense cloud
of smoke.

"Explain yourself," he insisted.

John stood on the hearth-rug, with his hands in his pockets. His morning
clothes were exceedingly well-cut, his tie and collar unexceptionable,
his hair closely cropped according to the fashion of the moment. He had
an extremely civilized air.

"Look here, Graillot," he said, "I'll tell you what I've done, although
I don't suppose you would understand what it means to me. I've visited
practically every theater in London."

"Alone?"

"Sometimes with Miss Maurel, sometimes with her little friend, Sophy
Gerard, and sometimes alone," John replied. "I have bought a Baedeker,
taken a taxicab by the day, and done all the sights. I've spent weeks in
the National Gallery, picture-gazing, and I've done all those more
modern shows up round Bond Street. I have bought a racing-car and
learned to drive it. I have been to dinner parties that have bored me
stiff. I have been introduced to crowds of people whom I never wish to
see again, and made one or two friends," he added, smiling at his guest,
"for whom I hope I am properly grateful."

"The prince has been showing you round a bit, hasn't he?" Graillot
grunted.

"The prince has been extraordinarily kind to me," John admitted slowly,
"for what reason I don't know. He has introduced me to a great many
pleasant and interesting people, and a great many whom I suppose a young
man in my position should be glad to know. He has shown me one side of
London life pretty thoroughly."

"And what about it all?" Graillot demanded. "You find yourself something
more of a citizen of the world, eh?"

"Not a bit," John answered simply. "The more I see of the life up here,
the smaller it seems to me. I mean, of course, the ordinary life of
pleasure, the life to be lived by a young man like myself, who hasn't
any profession or work upon which he can concentrate his thoughts."

"Then why do you