"What, where—anything particular that I want to see?"

This rather scares me, but I take it as a challenge and make up my mind that I will know him. He is difficult, and, somehow, I don't believe that he cares for movie actors. Maybe I am only possible "copy" to him?

He seems to be doing me a kindness and I find myself feeling rather stiff and on my best behaviour, but I resolve that before the evening is through I will make him open up and like me, for I am sure that his interest is well worth while.

I have nothing to suggest except that we ramble along with nothing deliberate in view. I feel that this pleases him, for a light of interest comes into his eyes, chasing one of responsibility. We are just going to stroll along.

X.
I MEET THOMAS BURKE AND H. G. WELLS

As Burke and I ramble along toward no place in particular, I talk about his book. I have read "Limehouse Nights" as he wrote it. There is nothing I could see half so effective. We discuss the fact that realities such as he has kept alive seldom happen in a stroll, but I am satisfied. I don't want to see. It could not be more beautiful than the book. There is no reaction to my flattery. I must watch good taste. I feel that he is very intelligent, and I am silent for quite a while as we stroll toward Stepney. There is a greenish mist hanging about everything and we seem to be in a labyrinth of narrow alleyways, now turning into streets and then merging into squares. He is silent and we merely walk.

And then I awaken. I see his purpose. I can do my own story—he is merely lending me the tools, and what tools they are! I feel that I have served an ample apprenticeship in their use, through merely reading his stories. I am fortified.

It is so easy now. He has given me the stories before. Now he is telling them over in pictures. The very shadows take on life and romance. The skulking, strutting, mincing, hurrying forms that pass us and fade out into the night are now becoming characters. The curtain has risen on "Limehouse Nights," dramatised with the original cast.

There is a tang of the east in the air and I am tinglingly aware of something vital, living, moving, in this murky atmosphere that is more intense even for the occasional dim light that peers out into the soft gloom from attic windows and storerooms, or municipal lights that gleam on the street corners.

Here is a little slice of God's fashioning, where love runs hand in hand with death, where poetry sings in withered Mongolian hearts, even as knives are buried in snow-white breasts and swarthy necks. Here hearts are broken casually, but at the same time there comes just as often to this lotus land the pity, terror, and wonder of first love, and who shall say which is predominant?