"A platform under her feet and an atmosphere about her. Well, she's got me to stand on and to surround her. She understands it. She likes it. Nothing else matters much." "Ah!" said I. "I'm her bedrock, and I'm her--How do they say it? I'm her--envelopment, as those painting fellows put it." "See here, Johnny," I protested; "Don't get anachronistic. We are only in 1884. That expression won't reach America for ten or fifteen years. Have some regard for dates." "It won't? Wasn't it in your friend's letter?" "What friend?" "Why, Prince; when he was in Paris. Didn't you read it to me?" I remembered. "Do you know," he went on, "I've been straight as a string--ever since. And I'm going to keep so." "I should hope so, indeed." "Whatever I may have been before. But I think it's better for a young fellow to dash in and find out than to keep standing on the edge and just wonder." "Well, I don't know, Johnny," I returned soberly. "I'm going to be married myself, next month. And I expect to go to my bride just as pure--" "No preaching," said Johnny. "The slate's wiped clean. Adele's all right for me, and I'm all right to her." He adjusted his hat, making the two sides of the brim level. "We're going to move shortly," he stated. "The business can go on where it is, for a while, but we're going to live somewhere else." Perhaps in the city itself, it appeared; perhaps in some suburb toward the north. But no longer in one to the west. Johnny was developing some such scent for social values and some such feeling for impending topographical changes as had begun to stir the great houses that were grouped about the Princes. "So you're the next one?" he said presently. "It's the only life. Good luck to you. And who's going to see you through? Prince?" "Yes--'my friend.' I'm glad you remember him." "Oh yes; I can remember him when I try. But I don't try very hard or very often. Back in this country?" "He is." "What's he doing?" Johnny fixed his hard blue eyes firmly on me. I was sorry to have no very definite answer. "He has been in the East lately. He'll be back here in time for me." "Well," said Johnny darkly; and that was all. IV Raymond's "tower" was not static, but peripatetic. Early in his second summer abroad it was standing among the Dutch windmills for a brief season; and when he learned that I was to have a short vacation in England--the only quarter of the Old World I ever cared for--he left it altogether for a fortnight and came across from Flushing to see me.