, "on an adventurous quest, like a
knight--or a baronet, if you will--of the Round Table. I am in quest of
a Theory of Life."

"I guess I was born with it," cried young New York.

"I guess I'll die without finding it," said I.

London again. My quiet house. Antoinette and Stenson. The well-ordered
routine of comfort. My books. The dog's-eared manuscript of the "History
of Renaissance Morals," unpacked by Stenson and hid in its usual place
on the writing-table. Nothing changed, yet everything utterly different.

A growing distaste for the forced acquaintanceships of travel and a
craving for home brought me back. Save perhaps in health I had profited
little by my journeyings. My bodily shell formed part of strange
landscapes and occurred in fortuitous gatherings of men, but my heart
was all the time in my Mausoleum by the Regent's Park. I was drawn
thither by a force almost magnetic, irresistible. My two domestics
welcomed me home, but no one else. Only my lawyers knew of my arrival.
With them alone had I corresponded during the many months of my absence.
Stay; I did write one letter to Mrs. McMurray while I was at Verona,
in reply to an enquiry as to what had become of Carlotta and myself.
I answered courteously but briefly that Carlotta had run away with
Pasquale and that I should be abroad for an indefinite period. But not
even a letter from my lawyers awaited me. I thought somewhat wistfully
that I would willingly have paid six and eight pence for it. But the
feeling was momentary.

Then began a queer, untroubled life. Without definite resolve I became
a recluse, living forlornly from day to day. Like a bat I avoided the
outer sunshine and took my melancholy walks at night. I had a pride in
cherishing the habit of solitude. Were it not that I entertained a real
dislike of roots and water and the damp and manifold discomforts of
a cave, with which form of habitat the ministrations of Stenson and
Antoinette would have been inconsistent, I should have gone forth into
the nearest approach to a Thebaid I could discover. I was, in fact,
touched by the mild mania of the hermit. My club I never entered. A line
drawn from east to west, a tangent at the lowest point of the Zoological
Gardens formed the southern boundary of my wanderings. Once I spied
in the distance that very kind soul, Mrs. McMurray, and rushed into a
providential omnibus, so as to avoid recognition. My History remained
untouched. The glamour of the Ren