Will didn’t return to London till the end of October. He had spent the time meanwhile partly in the Bernese Oberland, and partly, later, on the south side of the Alps, among the valleys and waterfalls of the Canton Ticino. But when he arrived at Charing Cross, it was not empty-handed; he carried in his portmanteau the almost complete manuscript of _Cophetua’s Adventure_, that exquisite romance of no particular time and place, with its fanciful theme and its curious episodes, which proved at last that poetry is not stone-dead on our English stage, and that exquisite verse wedded to exquisite harmonies has still its fair chance of a hearing in England. He had only to polish it at his rooms in Craven Street, before submitting it to the opinion of the manager of the Harmony. Linnet came later. She had a two months’ engagement first to fulfil in Paris, where Will read, with a little pang of regret, in the _Figaro_ how she had turned the heads and captured the hearts (if any) of ten thousand _boulevardiers_. Her very innocence and simplicity at once delighted and surprised the profoundly sophisticated Parisian mind. All the world of the _foyer_ unanimously voted her _tout ce qu’il-y-a de plus enfantin_. “She has afforded us,” said a famous lady-killer of the Avenue Victor Hugo, “the rare pleasure of a persistent and unreasoning refusal.” So all Paris was charmed, as all Paris always is at any new sensation. An opera-singer insensible to the persuasiveness of diamonds and the eloquence of bank-notes—all Paris shugged its shoulders in incredulous astonishment. “_Incroyable!_” it muttered: “_mais enfin, elle est jeune, cette petite—ça viendra!_”