Those persons of influence whom young Gano had consulted in his dilemma all promised to keep him in mind and see what they could do, and most of them thereafter forgot even to invite him to dinner. He began to realize that being a young American of leisure, with no axe to grind, with an absurdly large income for a man of his years, and known to be sole heir to one of the big fortunes "in the States," was an altogether different matter from being a person suddenly bereft of these advantages. He gave up his charming _appartement_ in the Champs-Elysées, and presently found that he couldn't keep even the single room he had taken in the Rue de Miroménil. He moved to the Rue de Provence. He was in low water--very low water, indeed--before he got the post of Parisian correspondent on a London paper. With this diminutive buoy he managed to keep afloat; but his former position as an independent young gentleman with large expectations was blown upon, and no one more hypersensitive than he to the outward and visible signs of people's appreciation of his altered circumstances. He withdrew more and more from the swim. Smart Parisian society and the rich American colony knew him no more. After a while his English editor complained that his news was becoming too exclusively "literary and artistic; we expected something about the races last week. Give us more society." To this the Parisian correspondent replied: "I never yet wrote about society unless indirectly, and I do not propose to begin." "There was formerly," persisted the editor, who knew quite well what he wanted, "a flavor of the fashionable world about your Parisian notes, which our readers miss. French art and Bohemia are overdone." Gano sold some valuable books, and went over to London with the proceeds to have it out with the editor. The upshot of the interview was that he declined to furnish any more "Notes." The editor seemed perfectly resigned. However, after the struggle in Paris, Gano was convinced that London was the likelier place for him to find a footing. In the background of his mind he had already, when he sold his books, foreseen and accepted the result of the further discussion of his "Notes." He would at all events be on the spot in London, and would quickly find some opening. Talent was not the drug in the market here, he told himself, that it was in France. CHAPTER XV