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40 For an ambitious business man America is a great country."

"But supposing one had finished with business?" he persisted. "Supposing one wanted to develop tastes and a gift for another method of life?"

"Then I should say that New York is the one place in the world," she told him. "You are speaking of yourself?"

"Yes!"

"You have ambitions, I am sure," she continued. "Tell me, are they literary?"

"I would like to call them so," he admitted. "I have written a play and three stories, so bad that no one would produce the play or publish the stories."

"You have brought them with you?"

He shook his head.

"No! They are where I shall never see them again."

"Never see them again?" she repeated, puzzled.

"I mean that I have left them at home. I have left them there, perhaps, to a certain extent deliberately," he went on. "You see, the idea is still with me. I think that I shall rewrite them when I have settled down in America. I fancy that I shall find myself in an atmosphere more conducive to the sort of work I want to do. I would rather not be handicapped by the ghosts of my old failures."

"One's ghosts are hard sometimes to escape from," she whispered.

He clutched nervously at the end of his rug. She looked up and down along the row of chairs. There were one or two slumbering forms, but most were empty. There were no promenaders in sight.