Acting on Florian’s advice, Will did not even tell his tremulous little friend he was going to Innsbruck. “Better break it off at once,” Florian said, with practical common-sense, “once for all and absolutely. No chance of letters or any nonsense of that sort—if the dulcinea can write, which of course is doubtful.” And Will, having made up his mind to the wrench, acquiesced in this sage council. So for Linnet, the two strangers who had loomed so large, and played so leading a part on the stage of her little life for one rapturous fortnight, vanished utterly, as it were, at a single breath, like a dissolving cloud, into the infinite and the unknowable. By seven that night, the young Englishmen found themselves once more in the full flood of civilisation. The electric light shed its beams on their hotel; a Parisian _chef de cuisine_ turned out sweetbreads and ices of elaborate art to pamper their palates. Once more, Florian donned with joy the black coat of Bond Street. They had penetrated the Zillerthal with their knapsacks on their backs; but two leather portmanteaus, enclosing the fuller garb of civilised life, awaited their advent at Innsbruck. Thus restored to society, with a rosebud in his buttonhole, the dainty little man descended radiant to the _salle-à-manger_. He welcomed the change; after three whole weeks of unadulterated Nature, he had tired of Arcadia. And he loved _tables-d’hôte_: ’twas a field for the prosecution of social conquests. “A man goes there on his merits,” he said briskly to Will, as they dressed for dinner, “neither handicapped nor yet unduly weighted. Nobody knows who he is, and he knows nobody. So he starts there on the flat, without fear or favour; and if at the end of ten minutes he hasn’t managed to make himself the centre of a conversational circle, he may retire into private life as a social failure.”