He would go and present himself to an astonished Sylvester, acquaint him with his good fortune, and perhaps learn certain things concerning which delicacy had forbidden him to make too close inquiries. At any rate, there was a certain attractive impudence in the adventure. He lit a cigar and lay back on the soft cushions of the cab and regarded himself complacently in the strip of mirror. He was wearing well, he thought, as he caressed his Vandyke beard, and appeared by no means an unromantic lover. The deepening crows' feet about his eyes gave him a momentary uneasiness, but he parted his lips, and by way of compensation looked admiringly at his white, even teeth. The conviction that there was nothing about him that would be otherwise than physically attractive to the most fastidious feminine sense brought him an assured content. He gazed through the blue cigar-smoke up the long vista of clashing traffic broadening out by Hyde Park Corner, where London at its gayest displayed itself in the mellow afternoon sunlight. He waved his hand towards it as if summoning its blithe spirit to hear him. “Do you think I'm going to give you up?” he said, breaking into a laugh. For London, to the man of the pavement, the theatres, the studios, the newspaper offices, the clubs, the restaurants, means the elemental medium of his being. The deep bosom of Mother Nature would suffocate him. It is a picturesque thing to talk about, and it may be exploited by an ingenious contriver to his considerable advantage, but it did not satisfy the spiritual cravings of Roderick Usher. He had not the remotest intention of committing himself to lifelong exile with the Walden Art Colony, if his supple wit could devise other means of profiting by the enterprise. “But I nearly lost you!” he apostrophised London again, after a few moments.