Still, _vogue la galère_. When she returned to London there was little else to do. Eating and dancing filled many of her days and nights. She tried to recapture the pleasure of books which had been all her recreation for years; but, although her life was not a continuous whirl of engagements—for it requires a greater vogue as a pretty and unattached young woman than Olivia possessed to be booked for fourteen meals and seven evenings every week of the year—she found little time for solitary intelligent occupation. If she was at a loose end, Lydia’s hat shop provided an agreeable pastime. Or, as a thousand little odds and ends of dress demanded attention, there was always a sensuous hour or two to be spent at Pacotille’s and Luquin’s or Deville’s. Tea companions seldom failed. When she had no evening engagements she was glad to get to bed, soon after the dinner in the downstairs restaurant, and to sleep the sleep of untroubled youth. And all the time the spell of London still held her captive. To walk the crowded streets, to join the feminine crush before the plate-glass windows of great shops, to watch the strange birds in the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, to wander about the Abbey and the Temple Gardens, to enter on the moment’s impulse a Bond Street picture gallery or a cinema—all was a matter of young joy and thrill. She even spent a reckless and rapturous afternoon at Madame Tussaud’s. Sometimes Janet Philimore accompanied her on these excursions round the monuments of London. Janet, who had mild antiquarian tastes and a proletarian knowledge of London traffic, took her by tubes and buses to the old City churches and the Tower, and exhibited to her wondering gaze the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange and Guildhall up the narrow street. For sentimental interest, there was always Bobby Quinton, who continued to maintain himself under her maternal eye. And so the new life went on. It was one night in April, while she was standing under the porch of a theatre, Mouregard, her escort, having gone in search of his dinner-and-theatre brougham—for those were days when taxis were scarce and drivers haughty—that she found herself addressed by a long-nosed, one-armed man, who raised his hat. “Miss Gale—I’m sure you don’t remember me.” For a second or two she could not place him. Then she laughed. “Why—Major Olifant!” She shook hands. “What are you doing here? I thought you were buried among your fossils. Do tell me—how are the hot-water pipes? And how is the parrot? Myra has no faith in your bachelor housekeeping and is sure you’ve eaten him out of desperation.” He returned a light answer. Then, touching the arm of a man standing by his side: “Miss Gale—can I introduce Mr. Alexis Triona.” Triona bowed, stood uncovered while he took the hand which Olivia held out. “This is my landlady,” said Olifant. “He is privileged beyond the common run of mortals,” said Triona.