t of all, vivid still amongst receding
shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.

CHAPTER III

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN

After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage
at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of his
desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing out but a
shame-faced smile. Her figure vanished, wavering into the hurly-burly;
one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of her soon faded
from his mind. His cab, however, overtook the foreign vagrant marching
along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy stride--an observant,
disillusioned figure.

The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands. July
loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes beckoned him
faintly, hopelessly. She would not even be coming back to England for
another month.

. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected me.
Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good things in
life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me yesterday; the
poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for Parliament. Why should I
think myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one sees about in
the streets? If people's faces are a fair test of their happiness, I' d
rather not feel in any way responsible . . . .

The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded him
much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by; the
utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-driven
women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he saw
everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the steps
of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed,
capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked hunted-looking men;
of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging creatures in their
broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!

One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:

3, BLANK ROW
WESTMINSTER.
MY DEAR SIR,

Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you. Having beaten the
whole town, ignorant o