And to have a girl friend--and such a girl as Rita Wallace--was a delightful prospect. He saw himself responding to all sorts of simple feminine confidences, exploring reverently the unknown country of the Maiden mind, helping, protecting; unfolding new beauties for the young girl's delight. Yes! he would have a girl friend! The thing should be ideal, pure and without a thought of harm. She understood him, she trusted herself to him at once and she should be repaid richly from the stores of his mind. None knew better than he what jewels he had to give to one who could recognise jewels when she saw them. He changed his hat for a cap and had a coat brought down from his bedroom. Should he write a note to Mary at home? He had not sent her more than two telegrams of the "All going splendidly, too busy to write," kind, during the five days he had been in London. He decided that he would write a long letter to-morrow morning. Not to-night. To-night was to be one of pure, fresh pleasure. Every prospect pleased. Nothing whatever would jar. He was not in the mood to write home now--to compose details of his time in Town, to edit and alter the true record for the inspection of loving eyes. "My darling!" he said to himself as he drank the second whiskey and soda which had been brought to him since he had come in, but there was an uncomfortable feeling in the back of his mind that the words did not ring true. More than ever exhilarated, as excited as a boy, he jumped into the motor-car when it arrived, and glided swiftly westwards, congratulating himself a dozen times on the idle impulse which had sent him to Kensington. He began to wonder how it had come. The impulse to bring the book himself had been with him all day. It had taken him till lunch time at least to put himself in any way right--to _appear_ right even. With a sick and bitter mind he had gone through the complex physical ritual necessary after the night before--the champagne at eight, the Turkish bath, the hair-dresser's in Regent Street where fast men slunk with hot and shaking hands to have the marks of their vices ironed out of their faces with vibrating hammers worked by electricity. All through the morning, the bitter, naked, grinning truth about himself had been horribly present--no new visitor, but the same leering ghost he knew so well.