He considered. Should he at once make known the eminently respectable
person he was, the hopelessly respectable people he knew? Hardly! For
then, on the instant, like a bubble bursting, would go for good all
mystery and romance, and the lady of the grapefruit would lose all
interest and listen to him no more. He spoke solemnly to his rustling
curtains.

"No," he said. "We must have mystery and romance. But where--where shall
we find them?"

On the floor above he heard the solid tramp of military boots belonging
to his neighbor, Captain Stephen Fraser-Freer, of the Twelfth Cavalry,
Indian Army, home on furlough from that colony beyond the seas. It was
from that room overhead that romance and mystery were to come in mighty
store; but Geoffrey West little suspected it at the moment. Hardly
knowing what to say, but gaining inspiration as he went along, he wrote
the first of seven letters to the lady at the Carlton. And the epistle
he dropped in the post box at midnight follows here: DEAR LADY OF THE GRAPEFRUIT: You are very kind. Also, you are wise.
Wise, because into my clumsy little Personal you read nothing that was
not there. You knew it immediately for what it was--the timid tentative
clutch of a shy man at the skirts of Romance in passing. Believe me,
old Conservatism was with me when I wrote that message. He was fighting
hard. He followed me, struggling, shrieking, protesting, to the post box
itself. But I whipped him. Glory be! I did for him.