Jim went to Italy, and Senta, chaperoned by her sister-in-law, a gaunt woman of sixty, went, too, turning up at his hotels with the naughty grace of a spoiled child, sure to be welcome.  She eyed him obliquely, while telling him that “people were beginning to talk.”  She laughed, with a delight that Jim found maddening, when they chanced to meet some friends from Berlin in a quiet side street in Rome.  Jim cut his vacation short, and went back to work.

This angered Senta for the first time, and perhaps began to enlighten her.  She came sulkily back to Berlin, and began to spread abroad elaborate accounts of a quarrel between Jim and herself.  Jim so dreaded meeting her that he quite gave up everything but men’s society, but he could not quite escape from the knowledge that the affair was discussed and criticised.

And at this most untimely moment old Professor Stunner died, leaving a somewhat smaller fortune to his little widow than she had expected, and naming his esteemed young friend, Herr Doctor Studdiford, as her guardian and his executor.  This again gave Senta the prominence and picturesqueness she loved; to Jim it was a most deplorable mischance; it was with difficulty that he acquitted himself of his bare duty in the matter, his distaste for his young ward growing stronger every moment.  For weeks there was no hour in which he was not made exquisitely uncomfortable by her attitude of chastened devotion; eventually the hour came in which he had to stab her pride, and stab deep.  It was an ugly, humiliating, exasperating business, and when at last it was over, Jim found himself sick of Berlin, and yet sullenly unready to go home to California, as if he had failed, as if he were under even so faint a cloud.

Just then came a letter from Eileen, another from Phyllis.  Wasn’t he ever coming to London any more?  London was waiting to welcome him.  They had opened their little house in Prince’s Gate, the season was beginning, it was really extraordinarily jolly.  Did he know anything of the surgeon, Sir Peveril McCann?  He had said such charming things of Doctor Studdiford.  He had said—­but no, one wasn’t going to tell him anything that might, untold, make him curious enough to come!

Jim went to London, revelling in clear English speech after years of Teutonic gutturals, and rejoicing in the clean, clear-cut personalities with which he came in contact.  He loved the wonderful London drawing-rooms, the well-ordered lives, the atmosphere of the smart clubs and hotels, the plays and pictures and books that were discussed and analyzed so inexhaustibly.