Even Sheila herself could scarcely have found London more strange than did the two men who had just returned from a month’s sojourn in the northern Hebrides.  The dingy trees in Euston Square, the pale sunlight that shone down on the gray pavements, the noise of the omnibuses and carts, the multitude of strangers, the blue and mist-like smoke that hung about Tottenham Court road,—­all were as strange to them as the sensation of sitting in a hansom and being driven along by an unseen driver.  Lavender confessed afterward that he was pervaded by an odd sort of desire to know whether there was anybody in London at all like Sheila.  Now and again a smartly-dressed girl passed along the pavement:  what was it that made the difference between her and that other girl whom he had just left?  Yet he wished to have the difference as decided as possible.  When some bright, fresh-colored, pleasant-looking girl passed, he was anxious to prove to himself that she was not to be compared with Sheila.  Where in all London could you find eyes that told so much?  He forgot to place the specialty of Sheila’s eyes in the fact of their being a dark gray-blue under black eyelashes.  What he did remember was that no eyes could possibly say the same things to him as they had said.  And where in all London was the same sweet aspect to be found, or the same unconsciously proud and gentle demeanor, or the same tender friendliness expressed in a beautiful face?  He would not say anything against London women, for all that.  It was no fault of theirs that they could not be sea-kings’ daughters, with the courage and frankness and sweetness of the sea gone into their blood.  He was only too pleased to have proved to himself, by looking at some half dozen pretty shop-girls, that not in London was there any one to compare with Princess Sheila.

For many a day thereafter Ingram had to suffer a good deal of this sort of lover’s logic, and bore it with great fortitude.  Indeed, nothing pleased him more than to observe that Lavender’s affection, so far from waning, engrossed more and more of his thought and his time; and he listened with unfailing good-nature and patience to the perpetual talk of his friend about Sheila and her home, and the future that might be in store for both of them.  If he had accepted half the invitations to dinner sent down to him at the Board of Trade by his friend, he would scarcely ever have been out of Lavender’s club.  Many a long evening they passed in this way—­either in Lavender’s rooms in King street or in Ingram’s lodgings in Sloane street.  Ingram quite consented to lie in a chair and smoke, sometimes putting in a word of caution to bring Lavender back from the romantic Sheila to the real Sheila, sometimes smiling at some wild proposal or statement on the part of his friend, but always glad to see that the pretty idealisms planted during their stay in the far North were in no danger of dying out down here in the South.  Those were great days, too, when a letter arrived from Sheila.