side with the queerest collection of people in the world.  They stopped and talked in little knots, they entered and left the public houses, stood about outside the restaurants.  Here and there they walked arm in arm with women.  Taxicabs were turning in at the Savoy, taxicabs and private cars.  Young ladies of the stage, sometimes alone, very often escorted, were everywhere in evidence.  The life of London was flowing on in very much the same channels.  There were few, if any signs of that thing for which he sought.  The taxicab turned westwards, crossed Piccadilly Circus and proceeded along Piccadilly, its solitary occupant still gazing into the faces of the people with that same consuming interest.  It was all the same over again—­the smiling throngs entering and leaving the restaurants, the smug promenaders, the stream of gaily dressed women and girls.  Bond Street was even more crowded with shoppers and loiterers.  The shop windows were as full as ever, the toilettes of the women as wonderful.  Mankind, though khaki-clad, was plentiful.  The narrow thoroughfare was so crowded that his taxicab went only at a snail’s crawl, and occasionally he heard scraps of conversation.  Two pretty girls were talking to two young men in uniform.

“What a rag last night!  I didn’t get home till three!”

“Dick never got home at all.  Still missing!”

“Evie and I are worn out with shopping.  Everything’s twice as expensive, but one simply can’t do without.”

“I shouldn’t do without anything, these days.  One never knows how long it may last.”

The taxicab moved on, and the Bishop’s eyes for a moment were half-closed.  The voices followed him, however.  Two women, leading curled and pampered toy dogs, were talking at the corner of the street.

“Sugar, my dear?” one was saying.  “Why, I laid in nearly a hundredweight, and I can always get what I want now.  The shopkeepers know that they have to have your custom after the war.  It’s only the people who can’t afford to buy much at a time who are really inconvenienced.”

“Of course, it’s awfully sad about the war, and all that, but one has to think of oneself.  Harry told me last night that after paying all the income tax he couldn’t get out of, and excess profits; he is still—­”

The voices dropped to a whisper.  The Bishop thrust his head out of the window.

“Drive me to Tothill Street, Westminster,” he directed.  “As quickly as possible, please.”

The man turned up a side street and drove off.  Still the Bishop watched, only by now the hopefulness had gone from his face.  He had sought for something of which there had been no sign.

He dismissed his taxicab in front of a large and newly finished block of buildings in the vicinity of Westminster.  A lift man conducted him to the seventh floor, and a commissionaire ushered him into an already crowded waiting room.  A youth, however, who had noticed the Bishop’s entrance, took him in charge, and, conducting him through two other crowded rooms, knocked reverently at the door of an apartment at the far end of the suite.  The door was opened, after a brief delay, by a young man of unpleasant appearance, who gazed suspiciously at the distinguished visitor through heavy spectacles.