The solitary scholar found himself disastrously out of sympathy with it all. He had planned to give himself a month’s holiday in London before settling down, in some quiet and comfortable suburb, to the many years’ work that lay before him on the materials he had brought from China. He had formed no intention whatever of cutting himself off from communion with his fellow-men. Indeed, he meant, as soon as he could rid himself of the complications of his assumed name, to proclaim himself unobtrusively to the world as John Baltazar. Before coming finally to this decision, however, he must learn what had become of his wife, as he had no desire to play the disconcerting part of a tactless Enoch Arden. His first step on arriving at London had been to institute, through a firm of solicitors, discreet enquiries. He learned that his wife had been dead for thirteen years. He was at liberty to become John Baltazar again as soon as he liked. But in London, as James Burden, he stayed at the Savoy Hotel, a bewildered and disillusioned spectator of the modern world. How did the catastrophe happen? Thinking over it, as he often thought with shivers of disgust, in his moorland retreat, he could scarcely give an answer. Only once, since his interview with the audacious Spooner, had he given way to an overmastering impulse—and that was on his journey out to Shanghai. Anti-climax, in the shape of sudden storm and sea-sickness, cured him, and he vowed total abstinence all the time he should be in China; and he kept his vow. Perhaps, here in London, unaccustomed idleness and his disgust-filled loneliness drove him gradually and insensibly to the consolation of alcohol. The odd drinks during the day increased in number. He viewed a rosier London after a quart of old Burgundy at dinner. To sit in a crowded cosmopolitan café became his evening amusement, and the continuous consumption of brandies and soda aided indulgent observation. He had given himself his month’s holiday, and he meant to have it, no matter how joyless and unsympathetic was the holiday atmosphere. Now and then, in these popular resorts he picked casual acquaintanceship with a neighbour. He had the gift of making his companion’s conversation intelligent and interesting. On these occasions he drank less.