“Yes, an episode, that’s all it is,” said Shelmerdene queerly, and still her face forgot to smile. “That’s how he would think of it now. He has had his lesson, you see--and many episodes! And so all the childishness has gone out of him.... He can’t be hurt by a face in a mirror now, Raymond! He would just laugh, and he has an eighteenth-century kind of laugh. Poor lamb, all the childishness has been spilled out of him.” And Shelmerdene’s eyes softly followed the figure among the tall tulips, while young Raymond Paris murmured: “You see, what editors want is a story with some sort of point....” II: WHEN THE NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE There is a tale that is told in London about a nightingale, how it did this and that and, finally, for no apparent reason, rested and sang in Berkeley Square. A well-known poet, critic, and commentator heard it, and it is further alleged that he was sober. Some men, of course, now say that it was not a nightingale at all, but only the South wind singing in the trees of the square, but it is a fact that some men will say anything. And some men have formed a Saint James’s Square school of thought, but it was in Berkeley Square that the poet, critic, and commentator, who was sober, distinctly heard the song of the nightingale, on a night in the heart of the drought of the year 1921. In the drawing-room of a house midway on the entailed side of the square sat a lady and a gentleman silently. Or rather, the lady lay, while the gentleman sat, and the sofa on which she lay was far from the arm-chair in which he sat. The room was spacious; four shaded candles in tall candlesticks of ancient brass gave calm colour to its dimness; and four open windows, from which the curtains were withdrawn in slack folds of shining silver, gave out to the leaves of the trees, which murmured among themselves just a little. At last the gentleman roused himself from the gloom of his chair in the recess of the room, and threw back his head and stretched his arms so that little things cracked behind his shoulders. But the lady did not stir nor look round at him, she lay still on the sofa by the windows, her head deep in the hollow of a crimson cushion, her eyes thoughtfully on the ceiling, which was high enough to refuse itself to exact scrutiny in the affected light of four candles. The gentleman drew a cigar-case from his breast pocket, and a cigar from the case. He bit the cigar, and then he moved, to deposit what he had bitten from the tip of his finger into an ash-tray. Then he lit his cigar, thoughtfully, and he said: “Hell, it’s hot!” “Perhaps, dear, it’s a rehearsal for same,” said the lady.