stay?"

John made no immediate reply. Instead, he walked to the window of his
sitting room and stood looking out across the Thames with a
discontented frown upon his face. Between him and the Frenchman a
curious friendship had sprung up during the last few months.

"Tell me, then," Graillot continued, taking a bite from his piece of
cake and shaking the crumbs from his waistcoat, "what do you find in
London to compensate you for the things you miss? You are cooped up here
in this little flat--you, who are used to large rooms and open spaces;
you have given up your exercise, your sports--for what?"

"I get some exercise," John protested. "I play rackets at Ranelagh most
mornings, and I bought a couple of hacks and ride occasionally in the
park before you're out of bed."

"That's all right for exercise," Graillot observed. "What about
amusements?"

"Well, I've joined a couple of clubs. One's rather a swagger sort of
place--the prince got me in there; and then I belong to the Lambs, where
you yourself go sometimes. I generally look in at one or the other of
them during the evening."

"You see much of Miss Maurel?"

John shook his head gloomily.

"Not as much as I should like," he confessed. "She seems to think and
dream of nothing but this play of yours. I am hoping that when it is
once produced she will be more free."

"I gather," Graillot concluded, "that, to put it concisely and
truthfully, you are the most bored man in London. There is something
behind all this effort of yours, my friend, to fit yourself, the round
human being, into the square place. Speak the truth, now! Treat me as a
father confessor."

John swung round upon his heel. In the clear light it was obvious that
he was a little thinner in the face and that some of the tan had gone
from his complexion.

"I am staying up here, and going on with it," he announced doggedly,
"because of a woman."

Graillot stopped eating, placed the remains of his cake in the saucer of
his teacup, and laid it down. Then he leaned back in his chair and
balanced his finger-tips one against the other.

"A woman!" he murmured. "How you astonish me!"

"Why?"

"Candor is so good," Graillot continued, "so stimulating to the moral
system. It is absolute candor which has made friends of two people so
far apart in most ways as you and myself. You surprise me simply because
of your reputation."

"What about my reputation?"

Graillot smiled benignly.

"In France,