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"There are millions of pretty girls in town," ventured Williams. "I don't think I exaggerate in that respect."

"But they'd call an officer if young men in real life behaved as they do in your stories. As a matter of fact and record, there's no more romance in New York than there is in the annual meeting of the British Academy of Ancient Assyrian Inscriptions. And you know it, Williams!"

"I think it depends on the individual man," said Williams timidly.

"How?"

"If there's any romance in a man himself, he's apt to find the world rather full of it."

"Do you mean to say there isn't any romance in me?" demanded George Z. Green hotly.

"I don't know, George. Is there?"

"Plenty. Pl-en-ty! I'm always looking for romance. I look for it when I go down town to business; I look for it when I go home. Do I find it? No! Nothing ever happens to me. Nothing beautiful and wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice ever tries to pick me up. Explain that!"

Williams, much abashed, ventured no explanation.

"And to think," continued Green, "that you, my old school friend, should become a celebrity merely by writing such stories! Why, you're as celebrated as any brand of breakfast food!"

"You don't have to read my books, you know," protested Williams mildly.

"I don't have to – I know it. But I do. Everybody does. And nobody knows why. So, meeting you again after all these unromantic years, I thought I'd just ask you whether by any chance you happen to know of any particular section of the city where a plain, everyday broker might make a hit with the sort of girl you write about. Do you?"

"Any section of this city is romantic enough – if you only approach it in the proper spirit," asserted Williams.

"You mean if my attitude toward romance is correct I'm likely to encounter it almost anywhere?"

"That is my theory," admitted Williams bashfully.

"Oh! Well, what is the proper attitude? Take me, for example. I've just been to the bank. I carry, at this moment, rather a large sum of money in my inside overcoat pocket. My purpose in drawing it was to blow it. Now, tell me how to blow it romantically."

"How can I tell you such a thing, George – "

"It's your business. You tell people such things in books. Now, tell me, face to face, man to man, how to get thoroughly mixed up in the sort of romance you write – the kind of romance that has made William McWilliam Williams famous!"

"I'm sorry – "

"What! You won't! You admit that what you write is bunk? You confess that you don't know where there are any stray queens with whom I might become happily entangled within the next fifteen minutes?"

"I admit no such thing," said Williams with dignity. "If your attitude is correct, in ten minutes you can be up against anything on earth!"

"Where?"

"Anywhere!"

"Very well! Here we are on Madison Square. There's Admiral Farragut; there's the Marble Tower. Do you mean that if I walk from this spot for ten minutes – no matter in what direction – I'll walk straight into Romance up to my neck?"

"If your attitude is correct, yes. But you've got to know the elements of Romance when you see them."

"What are the elements of Romance? What do they resemble?" demanded George Z. Green.

Williams said, in a low, impressive voice:

"Anything that seems to you unusual is very likely to be an element in a possible romance. If you see anything extraordinary during the next ten minutes, follow it up. And ninety-nine chances in a hundred it will lead you into complications. Interfering with other people's business usually does," he added pleasantly.

"But," said Green, "suppose during the next ten minutes, or twenty minutes, or the next twenty-four hours I don't see anything unusual."

"It will be your own fault if you don't. The Unusual is occurring all about us, every second. A trained eye can always see it."

"But suppose the Unusual doesn't occur for the next ten minutes," insisted Green, exasperated. "Suppose the Unusual is taking a vacation? It would be just my luck."

"Then," said Williams, "you will have to imagine that everything you see is unusual. Or else," he added blandly, "you yourself will have to start something. That is where the creative mind comes in. When there's nothing doing it starts something."

"Does it ever get arrested?" inquired Green ironically. "The creative mind! Sure! That's where all this bally romance is! – in the creative mind. I knew it. Good-bye."

They shook hands; Williams went down town.

XXII

This picture is not concerned with his destination. Or even whether he ever got there.

But it is very directly concerned with George Z. Green, and the direction he took when he parted from his old school friend.

As he walked up town he said to himself, "Bunk!" several times. After a few moments he fished out his watch.

"I know I'm an ass," he said to himself, "but I'll take a chance. I'll give myself exactly ten minutes to continue making an ass of myself. And if I see the faintest symptom of Romance – if I notice anything at all peculiar and unusual in any person or any thing during the next ten minutes, I won't let it get away – believe me!"

He walked up Broadway instead of Fifth Avenue. After a block or two he turned west at hazard, crossed Sixth Avenue and continued.

He was walking in one of the upper Twenties – he had not particularly noticed which. Commercial houses nearly filled the street, although a few old-time residences of brownstone still remained. Once well-to-do and comfortable homes, they had degenerated into chop sueys, boarding houses, the abodes of music publishers, artificial flower makers, and mediums.

It was now a shabby, unkempt street, and Green already was considering it a hopeless hunting ground, and had even turned to retrace his steps toward Sixth Avenue, when the door of a neighbouring house opened and down the shabby, brownstone stoop came hurrying an exceedingly pretty girl.

Now, the unusual part of the incident lay in the incongruity of the street and the girl. For the street and the house out of which she emerged so hastily were mean and ignoble; but the girl herself fairly radiated upper Fifth Avenue from the perfectly appointed and expensive simplicity of hat and gown to the obviously aristocratic and dainty face and figure.

"Is she a symptom?" thought Green to himself. "Is she an element? That is sure a rotten looking joint she came out of."

Moved by a sudden and unusual impulse of intelligence, he ran up the brownstone stoop and read the dirty white card pasted on the façade above the door bell.

THE PRINCESS ZIMBAMZIM

TRANCE MEDIUM. FORTUNES

Taken aback, he looked after the pretty girl who was now hurrying up the street as though the devil were at her dainty heels.

Could she be the Princess Zimbamzim? Common sense rejected the idea, as did the sudden jerk of soiled lace curtains at the parlour window, and the apparition of a fat lady in a dingy, pink tea-gown. That must be the Princess Zimbamzim and the pretty girl had ventured into these purlieus to consult her. Why?

"This is certainly a symptom of romance!" thought the young man excitedly. And he started after the pretty girl at a Fifth Avenue amble.