the other,
endless, stretching to infinity, filled me with horror. Yes, with the
horror of solitude in a vast city. Oh, you solitary, you who have felt
that horror descending upon you, desolating, clutching, and chilling the
heart, you will comprehend me!

At the corner, of the two boulevards was a glowing cafe, the Cafe du
Dome, with a row of chairs and little tables in front of its windows. And
at one of these little tables sat a man, gazing absently at a green glass
in a white saucer. I had almost gone past him when some instinct prompted
me to the bravery of looking at him again. He was a stoutish man,
apparently aged about forty-five, very fair, with a puffed face and
melancholy eyes. And then it was as though someone had shot me in the
breast. It was as if I must fall down and die--as if the sensations which
I experienced were too acute--too elemental for me to support. I have
never borne a child, but I imagine that the woman who becomes a mother
may feel as I felt then, staggered at hitherto unsuspected possibilities
of sensation. I stopped. I clung to the nearest table. There was ice on
my shuddering spine, and a dew on my forehead.

'Magda!' breathed the man.

He had raised his eyes to mine.

It was Diaz, after ten years.

At first I had not recognised him. Instead of ten, he seemed twenty years
older. I searched in his features for the man I had known, as the
returned traveller searches the scene of his childhood for remembered
landmarks. Yes, it was Diaz, though time had laid a heavy hand on him.
The magic of his eyes was not effaced, and when he smiled youth
reappeared.

'It is I,' I murmured.

He got up, and in doing so shook the table, and his glass was overturned,
and scattered itself in fragments on the asphalte. At the noise a waiter
ran out of the cafe, and Diaz, blushing and obviously making a great
effort at self-control, gave him an order.

'I should have known you anywhere,' said Diaz to me, taking my hand, as
the waiter went.

The ineptitude of the speech was such that I felt keenly sorry for him. I
was not in the least hurt. My sympathy enveloped him. The position was so
difficult, and he had seemed so pathetic, sitting there alone on the
pavement of the vast nocturnal boulevard, so weighed down by sadness,
that I wanted to comfort him and soothe him, and to restore him to all
the brilliancy of his first period. It appeared to me unjust and cruel
that the wheels of life should have cr