e hand-rail appeared to lengthen into dream-like coils, and the
threadbare, drab-hued carpet, with its vivid red border, to assume the
proportions of some confusing scroll.

But at length the end was reached, and Jean, beaming and triumphant,
announced their goal.

'This way! If monsieur would have the goodness to take two steps in this
direction!' He dived into a long, dark corridor, illuminated by a single
flickering gas-jet, twin brother to that which lighted the office below;
and, still eager, still breathing loudly, he ushered the guest toward
what in his humble soul he believed to be the luxurious, the impressive
bedroom supplied by the Hotel Railleux at three francs a night.

The boy looked about him as he passed down the dim corridor. Apparently
he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and
sleeping passages. One sign of humanity--and one alone--came to his
senses with a suggestion of sordid drama. On the floor, at the closed
door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed
an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses.

Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture--conjured and shrank from
it. He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the
corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his
prospective bedroom.

"The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride. He had lived for
ten years in the Hotel Railleux, working as six men and six women
together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had
never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting
hostelry.

The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a
big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion. His movements were
hasty, as though he desired to escape from some impression; his voice,
when he spoke, was vague.

"Very nice! Very nice!" he said. "And--and what is the view?"

"The view? Oh, but monsieur will like the view!" Jean stepped to the
window, drew back the heavy cretonne curtains, and threw open the long
window, admitting a breath of chilling cold. "The court-yard! See,
monsieur! The court-yard!"

The boy came forward into the biting air and gazed down into the
well-like depths of gloom, at the bottom of which could be discerned a
small flagged court, ornamented by a couple of dwarfed and frost-bitten
trees in painted tubs.

Jean, watchful of the visitor's face, broke forth anew with
inexhaustible ta