The only “right” any of us had to time off was to our annual vacation of two weeks, which we had to take whenever J. P. wished.  If, for any reason, one of us wanted leave of absence for a week or so, the matter had to be put into the hands of the discreet and diplomatic Dunningham; and so when the time came when I simply had to go to London it was to Dunningham I went for counsel.

Judging by the results, his intercession on my behalf was not very successful, for, on the occasion of our next meeting, J. P. made it clear to me that if I insisted on going to London it would be on pain of his displeasure and at the peril of my post.  As I look back upon the incident, however, it is quite clear to me that the whole of his arguments and his dark hints were launched merely to test my sense of duty to those persons in London whom I had promised to see.

A day or two later J. P. told me that as I was going to London I might as well stay there for a month or two before joining him in New York.  He outlined a course of study for me, which included lessons in speaking (my voice being harsh and unpleasant) and visits to all the principal art galleries, theaters and other places of interest, with a view to describing everything when I rejoined him.

On the eve of my departure Dunningham handed me, with Mr. Pulitzer’s compliments, an envelope containing a handsome present, in the most acceptable form a present can take.

It was not until I was in the train, and the train had started, that I was able to realize that I was free.  During the journey to London my extraordinary experiences of the past three months detached themselves from the sum of my existence and became cloaked with that haze of unreality which belongs to desperate illness or to a tragedy looked back upon from days of health and peace.  Walking down St. James’s Street twenty-four hours after leaving Wiesbaden, J. P. and the yacht and the secretaries invaded my memory not as things experienced but as things seen in a play or read in a story long ago.

I lost no time in making myself comfortable in London.  Inquiries directed to the proper quarter soon brought me into touch with a gentleman to whose skill, I was assured, no voice, however disagreeable, could fail to respond.  I saw my friends, my business associates, my tailor.  I went to see Fanny’s First Play three times, the National Portrait Gallery twice, the National Gallery once, and laid out my plans to see all the places in London (shame forbidding me to enumerate them) which every Englishman ought to have seen and which I had not seen.

This lasted for about two weeks, during which I saw something of Craven, who had left us in Naples to study something or other in London, and who was under orders to hold himself in readiness to go to New York with J. P. We dined at my club one night, and when I returned to my flat I found a telegram from Mr. Tuohy, instructing me to join J. P. in Liverpool the next day in time to sail early in the afternoon on the Cedric, as it had been decided to leave Craven in London for the present.