I would merely
fly to my flat, giving up my evenings to the low humour of Rabelais, or
to deep, deep sleep.

Although for years one could not lose me in London, or flabbergast me
with those leaning-tower-of-Pisa addresses (the items piled one upon the
other in innumerable strata), I knew nothing of the goings-on when the
windows of London became patches of orange light. In fact, I assumed
that when I slept London also snored. To think of London and of night
romance was like conjuring up the wildest of anachronisms. Romance there
was in London, but to me it had always been shot through with sunshine.
It had been the hard commercial romance of the Stock Exchange. Or the
courteous and impeccable romance of polished hats and social banalities.
Or the gustatory romance of Cheddar cheese, musty ale, roast lamb and
greens. Or it had been the romance of the Cook's tourist--the romance of
cathedrals, towers, palaces, dungeons and parliamentary buildings. Or
the romance of pomp, of horseguards and helmets and epaulettes and brass
buttons and guns at "present arms." Or it had been the anaemic romance of
Ceylon tea, toasted muffins and _petits fours_. As for amours and
intrigues and subdued lights and dances and cabarets and sparkling
_demi-mondaines_ and all-night orchestras and liquid jousting bouts and
perfume and champagne and rouge and kohl--who would have thought that
London, the severe, the formal; London, the saintly, the high-collared,
the stiff; London, the serious, the practical, the kid-gloved; London,
the arctic, the methodical, the fixed, the ceremonious, the starched,
the precise, the punctilious, the conservative, the static; London, the
God-fearing, the episcopal, the nice, the careful, the scrupulous, the
aloof, the decorous, the proper, the dignified--who would have thought
that London would loosen up and relax and partake of the potions of Eros
and Bacchus?

And yet--and yet--back of London's grim and formidable exterior there
lurks a smile. Her stiff and proper legs know how to shake themselves.
Her cold and sluggish blood grows warm to the strains of dance music.
Her desensitized and asphalt palate thrills and throbs beneath the
tricklings of _Cordon Rouge_. Her steel heart flutters at the touch of a
wheedling phryne. She, too, can wear the strumpet garb of youth. She,
too, in the vitals of her nature, longs for the gay romance of the
Boulevard Montparnasse ere the American possessed it. She, too, admires
t