My dear, I am going to tell you something. The lady came to my rooms quite unexpectedly the other day, and asked for tea, which Gilet made for her, and then she just sat and looked at me with her inscrutable smile and her mysterious eyes. Finally she got up and went over and looked at your photograph for a long while, then turned and said, “Your little Polly is very sweet, even if she doesn’t like me. Is it true that you return for your wedding soon?” “Quite true,” I replied. “We’ve been very good friends, you and I,” she went on, “and I am sorry to have you go. Goodbye.” She gave me her hand which I kissed, for there were tears on her lashes, and I followed her down to put her in the cab. She said with that usual cryptic look of hers, “I’ve made up my mind to something this afternoon. Don’t be surprised when you get word of it. Farewell.” The man cracked his whip and off she went. But still, there remains some mystery about her and about Peppi to be unravelled yet. The two are married, so far, so good, but where does the Prince come in? Surely he and she were conspiring about something. She evidently wanted you to marry him, and she may have thought then that I could be more devoted to her, who knows? Then, too, there were those paintings, the copies of old masters, all packed and addressed to Boris in New York. Peppi I trust, Lisa I pity, but your Muscovite I believe is a rascal. Won’t we have a lot to talk over? And think, too, dear, from now on I’ll be traveling every hour toward you. * * * * * A. D. TO POLLY _London, May._ This is the last way station, dearest, on my journey to New York and you. I delight in these stages, the jump from Rome to Paris--Paris to London--and London to Home! The crossing from Paris was wretched, a great gale blowing up the channel, but at least we were able to make it, which wasn’t the case every day this week. England hasn’t changed much since my last visit. I am always amused on landing to find everything exactly the same--the same weather, the same incomprehensible accent and manner of talking, the same points of view, the newspapers harping on the same subjects, the same items in the society columns--everything so conventional. We were landed in the same old uncomfortable manner at Folkestone, while the same crowds of mannish-looking women with great buns of hair stood in line and stared, and men in knickerbockers and mackintoshes stood sturdily in the wet gale and smoked bull-dog pipes, just as pictures in “Punch” show they did a generation ago. Then in the same cold compartment carriages we came speeding across the same country, past the same roof tops, into the same Charing Cross station. And behold, the atmosphere was made up of the same smoke and fog I learned to know so well, and the lights burned dimly as of old.