arrow banquettes; sleepy-eyed women were unbarring
the shutters of their tiny shops; high-wheeled milk-carts were rattling
over the granite pavements; in the vine-hung court-yards, visible here
and there through iron _grilles_, parrots were scolding on their
perches; children pattered up and down the long, arched corridors; the
prolonged cry of an early clothes-pole man echoed, like the note of a
winding horn, through the close alleys. Keith sauntered carelessly
along.

"In so many hours," he kept repeating to himself, "I shall be on my way
to La Glorieuse. The boat will swing into the home landing; the negroes
will swarm across the gang-plank, laughing and shouting; Madame Arnault
and Felice will come out on the gallery and look, shading their eyes
with their hands. Oh, I know quite well that the old madame will greet
me coldly at first. Her eyes are like steel when she is angry. But when
she knows that I am once more a sane man--And Felice, what if she--But
no! Felice is not the kind of woman who loves more than once; and she
did love me, God bless her! unworthy as I was."

A carriage, driven rapidly, passed him; his eyes followed it idly, until
it turned far away into a side street. He strayed on to the market,
where he seated himself on a high stool in _L'Appel du Matin_ coffee
stall. But a vague, teasing remembrance was beginning to stir in his
brain. The turbaned woman on the front seat of the carriage that had
rolled past him yonder, where had he seen that dark, grave, wrinkled
face, with the great hoops of gold against either cheek? _Marcelite!_ He
left the stall and retraced his steps, quickening his pace almost to a
run as he went. Felice herself, then, might be in the city. He hurried
to the street into which the carriage had turned, and glanced down
between the rows of white-eaved cottages with green doors and batten
shutters. It had stopped several squares away; there seemed to be a
number of people gathered about it. "I will at least satisfy myself," he
thought.

As he came up, a bell in a little cross-crowned tower began to ring
slowly. The carriage stood in front of a low red brick house, set
directly on the street; a silent crowd pressed about the entrance. There
was a hush within. He pushed his way along the banquette to the steps. A
young nun, in a brown serge robe, kept guard at the door. She wore a
wreath of white artificial roses above her long coarse veil. Something
in his face appealed to her,