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satisfied without risking his life in some adventure or other.

The two friends sat there quietly over their dinner, criticising from time to time those about them.

"After all," Gurdon said presently, "you must admit that there is something in our civilization. Now, isn't this better than starving under a thin blanket, with a chance of being murdered before morning?"

Venner shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"I don't know," he said. "There is something in danger that stimulates me; in fact, it is the only thing that makes life worth living, I dare say you have wondered why it is that I have never settled down and become respectable like the rest of you. If you heard my story, you would not be surprised at my eccentric mode of living; at any rate, it enables me to forget."

Venner uttered the last words slowly and sadly, as if he were talking to himself, and had forgotten the presence of his companion. There was a speculative look in his eyes, much as if London had vanished and he could see the orchids on the table before him growing in their native forests.

"I suppose I don't look much like a man with a past," he went on; "like a man who is the victim of a great sorrow. I'll tell you the story presently, but not here; I really could not do it in surroundings like these. I've tried everything, even to money-making, but that is the worst and most unsatisfactory process of the lot. There is nothing so sordid as that."

"Oh, I don't know," Gurdon laughed. "It is better to be a multi-millionaire than a king today. Take the case of this man Fenwick, for instance; the papers are making more fuss of him than if he were the President of the United States or royalty travelling incognito."

Venner smiled more or less contemptuously. He turned to take a casual glance at a noisy party who had just come into the dining room, for the frivolous note jarred upon him. Almost immediately the little party sat down, and the decorous air of the room seemed to subdue them. Immediat

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