A chair which Immelan schemed to offer him elsewhere he calmly refused.
"This is my first evening in London, Lady Maggie," he said.

"I am fortunate." "Why ?" she asked.
He looked at her meditatively.

Then he accepted her unspoken invitation and seated himself on the lounge by her side.
"We who come from the self-contained countries of the world," he explained, "and China is one of them, come always with the desire and longing for new experiences, new sensations.

My own appetite for these is insatiable." "And am I a new sensation ?" Maggie asked, glancing up at him innocently enough, but with a faint gleam of mockery in her eyes.
"You are," he answered placidly.

"You reveal--or rather you suggest--the things of which in my country we know nothing." "But I thought you were all so hyper-civilised over there," Maggie observed.