_Gav dear,--I feel my health coming back to me. The doctor is a Frenchman. Don’t you find beards rather attractive? Becky Stein is in the next villa and we’ve been seeing such a lot of your friend Belijah and the Dick-Worthies--you remember them in the old days, don’t you, Wertheim they were then? Son Altesse is also in residence. I love this place, except for the pigeon-shooting. What a terrible radical you must think I am!_ _Love from your poor old_ _MOTHER_. _Spi is a perfect companion and does so want to meet you, he says. He’s so grateful to you, you know. Why not come and join us. I saw the Princess de Levi-Malthusi in the Rooms. She was in ermine and did you know she was dear Joey Rosenbaum’s first wife? We have a lot in common. I forget when Cambridge breaks up? Excuse blots, dear._ Gav folded up the letter meditatively. How familiar its Ambre perfume was to him! All the dear memories of childhood were delicately impregnated with its haunting scent, and from his snug first-class carriage now thundering through Hayes he was borne on the magic drugget of its subtle associations to Aix and Montreux and Harrogate and Nauheim and--but scarce a spa of Western Europe that had not once been his boytime’s playground. But the vacation? A certain weariness crept over his usually flamboyant imagination as he pondered its possibilities. The Riviera? No: he hated all that chromatic monotony: the sky was blue and so was the sea, and the trees were simply green. And then there was all that cruel publicity of press photographers. Decidedly he must find some less unvariegated _paesaggio_, a land with waters of chrysoprase and topaz trees and, hanging dome-like over all, a firmament of purest jargoon. And through the enchanted pathways of his mind flitted vividly a processional of marvellous cities--Modane and Vallorbe and Hendaye, Domodossola, Bobadilla the beautiful, which no traveller in fair Iberia can leave unvisited, and Poggibonsi with its very name drenched in dear romance.… PADDINGTON! And the blue-and-gold Renault awaiting him.… * * * * * He passed a quiet evening in the Albany (Uncle Wilkie had slipped over to Ostend for the spring races) and next morning found him out and about in Jermyn Street, still undecided, but toying gracefully with a beautiful idea. “Do you know Calypso’s isle, Prospero’s principality?” he asked the favoured hairdresser to whom he entrusted himself for daily face-massage. “One lies there, you know, on banks of moly, and eats, in lieu of the lotus, the ’khàsscheesh of blank oblivion and the snowy powder of the χοχαινὴ.” “Yes, m’sieur,” said the barber absently. “Good,” said Gav. “My favourite emperor and my favourite novelist both elected it as a dwelling-place.” “I read much of Victor Hugo myself, sir,” said the barber, removing a steaming towel. “No, no. I meant Capri, not Herm.”