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There was a gentility to English places that America, in all her brash youthfulness, could not match. Magnus slouched down in the tufted velvet chair-shabby at the arms, worn by decades of sleeves rubbing away the fabric-and gazed around the room. He sometimes wondered if he had been wrong to leave, if he should have endured the bad memories for the sake of the good, and suffered, and stayed. There had been one woman whom he had both loved and hated, and he had fled London to escape that memory.

Magnus had loved people here, and hated them.

He had seen the construction of the great station at Columbus Circle just before he had left, and hoped to return to find it finished at last.īut London was London, wearing its history in layers, with every age contained in the new age. He enjoyed traveling on the elevated railways, squealing brakes and all, and he was much looking forward to traveling through the vast underground systems they were building below the very heart of the city. Magnus loved being in a carriage rattling into the dazzling lights of Longacre Square, pulling up outside the Olympia Theatre's elaborate French Renaissance facade, or rubbing elbows with a dozen different kinds of people at the hot dog festival in Greenwich Village. Certainly New York had an energy at the turn of the century that no other city could match. It had been nearly a quarter century since Magnus had been in London. It took Magnus nearly twenty minutes to notice the boy shooting out all the lights in the room, but to be fair, he had been distracted by the decor.