I thought that my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible for the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes would banish Carlotta’s distracting image.  But no, it was one of the many vain reflections on which I based a false philosophy.  Whether in Beyrout, or the land of the “sweet singer of Persephone,” or Alexandria, or on the Cannebiere of Marseilles, or in the queer half-Orient of Algiers whither a restless pursuit of the Identical led me, or in Lisbon, or in the mountainous republic of Andorre, where I hoped to find primitive wisdom and to shape a theory from first principles, and whence I was ironically driven by fleas—­whether on land or sea, in cities or in solitudes, the vanished hand harped on my heartstrings and the voice that was still (as far as I was concerned) cooed its dove-notes into my ears.

I remember overhearing myself described on a steamboat by a pretty American girl of sixteen, as “a quaint gentle old guy who talks awful rot which no one can understand, and is all the time thinking about something else.”  My sudden emergence from the companion-way, where I was lighting a cigarette, brought red confusion into the young person’s cheeks.

“How old do you think I am?” I asked.

“Oh, about sixty,” quoth the damsel.

“I’m glad I’m quaint and gentle, even though I do talk rot,” said I.

With the resourcefulness of her nation she linked her arm in mine and started a confidential walk up and down the deck.

“You are just a dear,” she remarked.

She could not have said more to Anastasius Dose had he been there; as far as I can recollect he must just then have been dying of the Inevitable in Iceland.  Perhaps the few months had brought me to resemble him.  Instinctively I put my hand to my head to reassure myself that I was not wearing a rakish little soft felt hat with a partridge-feather, and I reflected with some complacency that my rimless pince-nez did not give me the owlish appearance produced by Anastasius Dose’s great round, iron-rimmed goggles.  From such crumbs of vanity are we sometimes reduced to take comfort.

“I just want to know what you are,” said my young American friend.

Shall I confess my attraction?  She brought a dim suggestion of Carlotta.  She had Carlotta’s colouring and Carlotta’s candour.  But there the resemblance stopped.  The grey matter of her brain had been distilled from the air of Wall Street, and there were precious few things between earth and sky of which she hadn’t prescience.

“I’m a broken-down philosopher,” said I.

" Oh, that’s nothing.  So is everybody as soon as they get sense.  What did you make your money in?”

“I’ve not made any money,” I answered, meekly.

“I thought all people who were knighted in your country had made piles of money.”

“Knighted!” I exclaimed.  “What on earth do you think a quaint old guy like myself could possibly have done to get knighted?”