Stella Maris, star of the sea! Stella Herold, star of that which is greater than all the multitudinous seas of earth, the soul of a man! He dreamed his dreams, and gave that evening an exceedingly bad performance. Soon afterwards, with drums playing and colours flying, Stella came with her retinue to London. She had rooms in a magnificent hostelry, a magnificent hired motor-car to transport her, and as magnificent raiment, chosen by her own delicate self, as any young woman could desire. But despite all this magnificence, she wept over many a lost illusion. Where were the music-haunted streets, the golden pavements, the gorgeous castles, the joyous throngs of which John, years ago, had fed the swift imagination of the child? On their way from Victoria' Station they passed through St. James's Park. “That's Buckingham Palace,” said Sir Oliver, with more pride than if he owned it. “That?” Her heart sank like a stone dropped down a well: That dingy, black barrack the stately home of the king? And when they swung up Constitution Hill and lined up in the traffic by Hyde Park Corner, “This,” said Sir Oliver, “is Piccadilly.” What she had expected, poor child, to find in Piccadilly, she scarcely knew; but from infancy, the name had a sweet and mystic significance. It connoted beauty and grandeur; it was associated in her mind with silk and gold and marble. It was what a street in the New Jerusalem might have been had John of Patmos had the training of a star reporter. Poor Piccadilly! To the Englishman the most beauteous, the most seductive, the fullest of meaning of all the thoroughfares of the cities of the world, to the disillusioned girl it was only a dismal, clattering, shrieking ravine. Why had they lied to her? She could not understand. The first evening she was overstrained, and went to bed early; but the next night they took her to see the play in which Herold was acting. “I 'll bring her round between the acts,” said John to Herold, during a discussion of the adventure. “You 'll do nothing of the sort,” said Herold. “It will interest her tremendously to go behind.” “And see all the tinsel and make-believe? What a fool you are, John!” “Well, anyhow, we 'll come and see you in your dressing-room,” said John, who recognized some reason in his friend's objection. “We can get round without crossing the stage.” Herold put his hands on John's great shoulders. “My dear John,” said he, “I love my profession very dearly, but there's one thing in it which I loathe, and that is having to paint my face.” He said no more; but John understood, though he thought it somewhat finicking of Herold to shrink from meeting Stella in his make-up. He had seen him talk thus to dames and damsels of the most exalted station without a shadow of false shame.