lt males. The initiation flattered his pride. He left
Mr. Ingram at the door of an English newspaper office in the Boulevard
des Italiens, and, after vainly asking for telegrams at the hotel,
walked away, aimlessly at first, along broad pavements encumbered with
the chairs and tables of vast, crowded cafes, and with bright Sunday
idlers and sinister street-vendors. But in a moment he had decided that
he must and ought to pay a call in the Rue d'Athenes. Mr. Ingram had
said nothing about his seeing Lois again, had not referred to Mrs.
Ingram's invitation to repeat his visit, might even vaguely object to an
immediate interview between him and Lois. Yet he could not, as a man of
the world, abandon Lois so unceremoniously. He owed something to Lois
and he owed something to himself. And he was a free adult. The call was
natural and necessary, and if Mr. Ingram did not like it he must, in the
Five Towns phrase, lump it. George set off to find the Rue d'Athenes
unguided. It was pleasurable to think that there was a private abode in
the city of cafes, hotels, and museums to which he had the social right
of entry.

The watching concierge of the house nodded to him politely as he began
to mount the stairs. The Ingrams' servant smiled upon him as upon an old
and familiarly respected friend.

"Mademoiselle Lois?" he said, with directness.

The slatternly, benevolent girl widened her mouth still further in a
smile still more cordial, and led him to the drawing-room. As she did so
she picked up a newspaper packet that lay on a table in the tiny hall,
and, without putting it on a salver, deposited it in front of Lois, who
was alone in the drawing-room. George wondered what Lois would have
thought of such an outrage upon established ritual had it happened to
her in the home of Irene Wheeler instead of in her own; and then the
imagined vision of Irene lying dead in the sumptuous home in the Avenue
Hoche seemed to render all established ritual absurd.

"So you've come!" exclaimed Lois harshly. "Mother's quite knocked over,
and Laurencine's looking after her. All the usual eau-de-Cologne
business. And I should say father's not much better. My poor parents!
What did dad want you for?"

The servant had closed the door. Lois had got up from her chair and was
walking about the room, pulling aside a curtain and looking out, tapping
the mantelpiece with her hand, tapping with her feet the base of the
stove, George had the sensation of bein