I did not hesitate for a moment. It was exactly the sort of invitation which I had coveted.
"I shall be delighted," I answered.
"I myself," my companion continued, "have no gift for writing. My talents, such as they are, lie in a different direction. But I have been in many countries, and adventures have come to me of various sorts. I may be able even to start you on your way—if, indeed, the author of The Lost Princess is ever short of an idea."
I smiled.
"I can assure you," I said, "that my pilgrimage this morning has no other object than to find one. I begin to fear that I have written too much lately. At any rate, the well of my inspiration, if I may use so grandiloquent a term, has run dry."
He put up his stick and hailed a hansom.
"After all," he said, "it is possible—yes, it is possible that you may succeed. Adventures wait for us everywhere, if only we go about in a proper frame of mind. We will lunch, I think, at the Café Grand."
I followed my prospective host into the cab. Was it altogether a coincidence, I wondered, that we were bound for the same restaurant whither the man and the girl had preceded us a few minutes before?