For that is what he chanced to see on the afternoon we tell of, a hand and a flower; and since it was inconceivable that the hand could belong to a man, so white and delicate it was, he put two and two together and decided that it could only belong to a lady. Further, there was that about the droop of the hand which fired him to think of it as the hand of an unhappy heart. While as for the flower, it was scarlet, and of the sort that anyone can buy at any florist’s by just going in and saying: “I want some carnations, please, but not white ones, please, thank you, good-day.” Now the sun was so high and bright over London that day that the voices of Americans were distinctly heard rising above the polished tumult of the Berkeley Hotel, crying plaintively for ice; and when at last our young writer came into Mayfair he was grateful for the cool quiet streets, but being still at some discomfort from the effects of the heat on his person, he thought to turn into Mount Street Gardens and rest a while beneath the trees. This, however, he was not to do that afternoon; for it chanced that he had not walked far towards that pleasaunce when, at that point of the pretty quarter of Mayfair where South Street becomes North Street and Grosvenor Square is but a step in the right direction, he was drawn to admire a great house that stood in a walled garden. Quite a country-house this looked like, and right in the heart of the town, so that our young gentleman thought: “Now I wonder whose house that is. Ah, to be rich! Or, at least, to be so attractive that rich people would take one to their hearts on sight!” In this wise relishing the deplorable charms of money, he had stared long over the wall at the house in the garden had not something happened which instantly gave his fancies a prettier turn: for what should he suddenly espy through the curtain of leaves but a hand drooping from one of the upper windows, and what should he espy in the hand but a scarlet flower? Now that made a delightful picture of innocence, of dreaming youth and fond imagining, and not at all the sort of thing you see every day, especially in Mayfair, where motor-cars grow from the cracks in the pavements and ladies recline in slenderness on divans, playing with rosaries of black pearls and eating scented macaroons out of bowls of white jade. Presently a policeman happened by, and the young gentleman thought to turn from the wall and greet him in a friendly way with a view to further conversation. “And what,” he asked, “is the name of the lady who lives in the house with the garden?” “Young sir,” said the policeman severely, “that will do from you.” “I beg your pardon!” said the young writer with spirit. “Granted,” said the policeman severely. “But this is absurd! I am an honest man and I have asked you an honest question.”