So it was "Sandro" already, was it? And that same Sandro, who loved famous paintings so, and knew such a lot about them, had been somewhere that newspapers did not reach from the time the panels were stolen from the château in which he was visiting, until he reappeared at Monte Carlo. But where had he been during that period, and what doing? I puzzled the matter over all the while as we said good night and climbed into our high-powered motor, at the wheel of which Richard, the chauffeur, sat like a sullen schoolboy, while Peaches, abandoning her usual place beside him, climbed into the back with the duke, whom we were dropping at his hotel. And the puzzle stayed in my mind after Peaches was asleep that night, she having first talked herself tired about her Sandro, she describing him in turn as a king, a sport, a Greek statue and a bearcat. And I was still puzzling over him for an hour after Morpheus had claimed her, which hour I occupied in trying on various pairs of her high-heeled French shoes, and finding them less uncomfortable than I had anticipated and certainly more becoming to the foot than my hygiene walkrite footwear. Of course Peaches' shoes were too big for me, as my foot was smaller than Abby's, considerably smaller, in fact; whereas Peaches' footgear was--well, Californian. But it did well enough to practice in, and I took advantage of this solitary hour to do so. But all the while that I walked up and down my chamber, the heels occasionally almost betraying me, my mind was on the duke. I determined to ask Abby all about him, for I deemed it my duty. And besides that, I wanted to see Abby soon again; I wanted to find out where she got her corsets. VII At this point in my narrative I call to mind the fact that my dear father ever laid the greatest stress upon the importance of the effect which the pursuit of reading has upon the human mind and upon the minds of juveniles in particular. He was convinced that if Euclid were read to a point of thorough familiarity at the age of twelve years by every male American the result would be a marked effect upon the political life of the nation, I remember; and he recommended that girls from the age of nine to nineteen be made thoroughly conversant with Saint Paul. In his famous treatise on the subject, entitled The Education of Freedom Talbot, he dwells at length upon the supreme importance of young people having access to books of the best quality without "let or hindrance," and devotes three chapters to the influence upon the later life of the individual of those books which are perused during the preadolescent and adolescent periods.