"Dear old man,"--the letter was dated London--"I am sky-high in a room for which I pay a shilling a night. A thing in the roof is called a window. Through it I see a field of pots--not flower-pots, but chimney-pots--and the smoke from them is hyacinthine. The smoke of endless winters and innumerable fogs has grimed every blessed thing in this filthy room. My bed-spread is grey cloth, once meant to be white. Other lodgers have left burnt matches on the faded carpet, whose flowers have long since been put out by the soot. Out of this hole in the roof I see London, the sky-line of London in a spring sky. There is a singular sort of beauty in this sky, as if it had trailed its cerulean mantle over fields of English bluebells. For another shilling I dine; for another I lunch. I skip breakfast. I calculate I can stay here ten days, then the shillings will be all gone, Tony. In these ten days, old man, I shall sell my play. I am writing you this on the window-sill; without is the mutter of soft thunder of London--the very word London thrills me to the marrow. Such great things have come out of London--such prose--such verse--such immortality! "To-day I passed 'Jo,' Dickens's street-sweeper, in Dickens's 'Bleak House.' I felt like saying to him, 'I am as poor as you are, Jo, to-day,' but I remembered there were a few shillings between us. "Well, old man, as I sit here I seem to have risen high above the roof-tops and to look down on the struggle in this great vortex of life, and here and there a man goes amongst them all, carrying a wreath of laurel. Tony, my eyes are upon him! Call me a fool if you will, call me mad; at any rate I have faith. I know I will succeed. Something tells me I will stand before the curtain when they call my name. It is growing late. I must go out and forage for food ... Tony. I kiss the hand of the beautiful Mrs. Faversham." Antony turned the pages between his fingers. The reading of the letter had smoothed the creases from his brow. He sighed as he lifted his head to say "Come in," for some one had knocked timidly at the door. "Hello!" Fairfax said, and now that they were alone he called her "Aunt Caroline." Madame Potowski came forward and kissed him. He drew a big chair into the window. He was always solicitous of her and a little pitiful. Madame Potowski's hair had been soft brown once; it was golden, frankly so, now, and her fine lips were a little rouged. In her dress of changeable silk, her cape of tulle, her hat with a bunch of roses, her tiny gloved hands, she was a very elegant little lady. She rested her hands on her parasol and had suggested his mother to Antony. Then, as that resemblance passed, came the fleeting suggestion which he never cared to hold--of Bella. "I have come, my dear Tony, to see you. I wanted to see you alone." Tony lit a cigar and sat by her side. The Comtesse Potowski had a little diamond watch with a chain on her breast. Outside the clock struck five.