"You young fellows never know the blessing of sleep. I can sleep whenever I want to--it's a great thing. I make it a rule though to do all my sleeping at night, whenever I can. You leave Paris in the morning? Now that's a thing I don't like to do. Paris should never be seen early in the morning. London shows to the best advantage early; but Paris--no!" "Why not?" Mr. Heron asked, stimulated to a little curiosity. "Paris is a beauty, you know, a little on the wane, and wanting to be elaborately made up and curled and powdered and painted, and all that. She's a little of a slattern underneath the surface, you know, and doesn't bear to be taken unawares--mustn't be seen for at least an hour or two after she has got out of bed. All the more like Balzac's women." Perhaps the elder man had observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he said, in his usual style of blunt but not unkind inquiry-- "Any of your people living in London?" "No--in fact, I haven't any people in England--few relations now left anywhere." "Like Melchisedek, eh? Well, I don't know that he was the most to be pitied of men. You have friends enough, I suppose?" "Not friends exactly--acquaintances enough, I dare say--people to call on, people who remember one's name and who ask one to dinner. But I don't know that I shall have much time for cultivating acquaintanceships in the way of society." "Why so? What are you going to London to do?" "To get a hearing, of course. To make the whole thing known. To show that I was in the right, and that I only did what the honor of England demanded. I trust to England." "What's England got to do with it? England is only so many men and women and children all concerned in their own affairs, and not caring twopence about you and me and our wrongs. Besides, who has accused you? Who has found fault with you? Your time is out, and there's an end." "But they have dropped me down--they think to crush me." "If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it." "I'll fight this out for all that." "You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course, if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to take up your case--no difficulty about that--and make you the hero of a grievance and a debate, and so on." "I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then----But I know they will."