. And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if
I'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come
half the world over at the call of two urgent telegrams.

The girl was out with the hounds, I think. And that poor devil beside me
was in an agony. Absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as passes the mind
of man to imagine.

III

IT was a very hot summer, in August, 1904; and Florence had already been
taking the baths for a month. I don't know how it feels to be a patient
at one of those places. I never was a patient anywhere. I daresay the
patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. They
seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air
of authority, their white linen. But, for myself, to be at Nauheim
gave me a sense--what shall I say?--a sense almost of nakedness--the
nakedness that one feels on the sea-shore or in any great open space.
I had no attachments, no accumulations. In one's own home it is as if
little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to
enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem
friendly when others may be hostile. And, believe me, that feeling is a
very important part of life. I know it well, that have been for so long
a wanderer upon the face of public resorts. And one is too polished up.
Heaven knows I was never an untidy man. But the feeling that I had
when, whilst poor Florence was taking her morning bath, I stood upon the
carefully swept steps of the Englischer Hof, looking at the carefully
arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst
carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety,
at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens,
going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths--or were they
white half-timber chalets? Upon my word I have forgotten, I who was
there so often. That will give you the measure of how much I was in
the landscape. I could find my way blindfolded to the hot rooms, to the
douche rooms, to the fountain in the centre of the quadrangle where the
rusty water gushes out. Yes, I could find my way blindfolded. I know
the exact distances. From the Hotel Regina you took one hundred and
eighty-seven paces, then, turning sharp, left-handed, four hundred and
twenty took you straight down to the fountain. From the Englischer Hof,
starting on the sidewalk, it was ninety-seven paces and the same four
h