They entered a cab and drove westward, through the decorated streets and surging crowds of the city, down Ludgate Hill and up the slope of Fleet street.  Jack left his friend in the Strand, before the Illustrated Universe building, with its windows placarded with the paper’s original sketches and sheets from the current issue, and it was more than an hour later when he turned up at Jimmie’s luxurious chambers in the Albany.  He was in slightly better spirits, and he exhaled an odor of brandy.  He had a check for five hundred pounds in his pocket, and there was more money due him.

“Where’s my war-paint?” he demanded.

That meant, in plain English, Jack’s dress clothes, and they were soon produced from a trunk he had left in Jimmie’s care.  He made a careful toilet, and then the two sallied forth into the blazing streets and pleasure-seeking throngs.

They went to the Continental, above Waterloo Place, and Jack ordered the dinner lavishly—­he insisted on playing the host.  He chatted in his old light-hearted manner during the courses, occasionally laughing boisterously, but with an artificial ring that was perceptible to his companion.  His eyes sparkled, and his brown cheeks flushed under the glow of the red-shaded lamps.

“This is a rotten world, Jimmie,” he said.  “You know that, don’t you?  But I’ve come home to have a good time, and I’m going to have it—­I don’t care how.”

“I wouldn’t drink any more,” Jimmie urged.

“Another bottle, old chap,” Jack cried, thickly, as he lighted a fresh cigar; “and then we’ll wind up at the Empire.”

“None for me, thank you.”

“Then I’ll drink it myself,” vowed Jack.  “Do you hear, garcon—­’nother bottle!’”

Jimmie looked at him gravely.  He had serious misgivings about the future.

* * * * *

Many of London’s spacious suburbs have the advantage of lying beyond the scope of the fog-breeding smoke which hangs over the great city, and at Strand-on-the-Green, on that 9th of November, the weather was less disagreeable.

A man and a woman came slowly from the direction of Kew Bridge, sauntering along the wet flagstones of the winding old quay, which was almost as lonely as a rustic lane.  Victor Nevill looked very aristocratic and handsome in his long Chesterfield coat and top hat; in one gray-gloved hand he swung a silver-headed stick.  Madge Foster walked quietly by his side, a dainty picture in furs.  She was as lovely as ever, if not more so, but it was a pale, fragile sort of beauty.  She had spent the summer in Scotland and the month of September in Devonshire, and had returned to town at the beginning of October.  Change of air and scenery had worked a partial cure, but had not brought back her merry, light-hearted disposition.  She secretly nursed her grief—­the sorrow that had fallen on her happy young life—­and tried hard not to show it.  There was a wistful, far-away expression in her eyes, and she seemed unconscious of the presence of her companion.