But his instinct was too tribal, too American.

Whether it were Naples or Paris or Vienna or St.Petersburg or Berlin, those women whom he met might have pleased him in everything save wedlock.

In London, and for a moment, Richard saw a girl he looked at twice.

But she straightway drank beer with the gusto of a barge-man, and the vision passed.
It was the evening after his return, and Richard at the Waldorf sat amusing himself with those tides of vulgar humanity that ebb and flow in a stretch of garish corridor known as Peacock Lane.

Surely it was a hopeless place wherein to seek a wife, and Richard had no such thought.
But who shall tell how and when and where his fate will overtake him?
Who is to know when Satan--or a more benevolent spirit--will be hiding behind the hedge to play good folk a marriage trick?
And Richard had been warned.