friends knew him under the front-name of Adrian. His mother lived in
Bethnal Green, which was not altogether his fault; one can discourage
too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent
geography. And, after all, the Bethnal Green habit has this
virtue--that it is seldom transmitted to the next generation. Adrian
lived in a roomlet which came under the auspicious constellation of W.

How he lived was to a great extent a mystery even to himself; his
struggle for existence probably coincided in many material details with
the rather dramatic accounts he gave of it to sympathetic
acquaintances. All that is definitely known is that he now and then
emerged from the struggle to dine at the Ritz or Carlton, correctly
garbed and with a correctly critical appetite. On these occasions he
was usually the guest of Lucas Croyden, an amiable worldling, who had
three thousand a year and a taste for introducing impossible people to
irreproachable cookery. Like most men who combine three thousand a
year with an uncertain digestion, Lucas was a Socialist, and he argued
that you cannot hope to elevate the masses until you have brought
plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to appreciate the
difference between coupe Jacques and Macedoine de fruits. His friends
pointed out that it was a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from
behind a drapery counter into the blessedness of the higher catering,
to which Lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were doubtful.
Which was perhaps true.

It was after one of his Adrian evenings that Lucas met his aunt, Mrs.
Mebberley, at a fashionable tea shop, where the lamp of family life is
still kept burning and you meet relatives who might otherwise have
slipped your memory.

"Who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you last night?" she
asked. "He looked much too nice to be thrown away upon you."

Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.

"Who are his people?" she continued, when the protege's name (revised
version) had been given her.

"His mother lives at Beth--"

Lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps a social
indiscretion.

"Beth? Where is it? It sounds like Asia, Minor. Is she mixed up with
Consular people?"

"Oh, no. Her work lies among the poor."

This was a side-slip into truth. The mother of Adrian was employed in
a laundry.

"I see," said Mrs. Mebberley, "mission work of some sort. And
m