Chesterfield in any impression of gentility. In spite of this primitive
regalia, however, Richard gave forth an idea of elevation, and as though
his ancestors in their civilization had long ago climbed above a level
where men put on gold to embellish their worth. What, then, did that
casket of carved bronze contain?

Richard took from its velvet interior the heel of a woman's shoe and
kissed it. It was a little kissable heel, elegant in fashion; one could
tell how it belonged aforetime to the footwear of a beautiful girl.
Perhaps this thought was aided by the reverent preoccupation of Richard
as he regarded it, for he set the boot-heel on the table and hung over
it in a rapt way that had the outward features of idolatry. It was right
that he should; the little heel spoke of Richard's first strong passion.

You will retrace the year to the 10th of June. Richard, after roving the
Eastern earth for a decade, had just returned to his own land, which he
hardly knew. Throughout those ten years of long idling from one European
city to another, had Richard met the woman he might love, he would have
laid siege to her, conquered her, and brought her home as his wife. 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?