out leaving. The encounter in the passage-way had
changed all that. The strange perfume of it still hung about him,
bemusing his heart and mind. For he knew that it was a girl who had
passed him, a girl's face that his fingers had brushed in the darkness,
and he felt in some extraordinary way as though he had been actually
kissed by her, kissed full upon the lips.

Trembling, he sat upon the sofa by the window and struggled to collect
his thoughts. He was utterly unable to understand how the mere passing
of a girl in the darkness of a narrow passage-way could communicate so
electric a thrill to his whole being that he still shook with the
sweetness of it. Yet, there it was! And he found it as useless to deny
as to attempt analysis. Some ancient fire had entered his veins, and
now ran coursing through his blood; and that he was forty-five instead
of twenty did not matter one little jot. Out of all the inner turmoil
and confusion emerged the one salient fact that the mere atmosphere, the
merest casual touch, of this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness, had
been sufficient to stir dormant fires in the centre of his heart, and
rouse his whole being from a state of feeble sluggishness to one of
tearing and tumultuous excitement.

After a time, however, the number of Vezin's years began to assert their
cumulative power; he grew calmer, and when a knock came at length upon
his door and he heard the waiter's voice suggesting that dinner was
nearly over, he pulled himself together and slowly made his way
downstairs into the dining-room.

Every one looked up as he entered, for he was very late, but he took his
customary seat in the far corner and began to eat. The trepidation was
still in his nerves, but the fact that he had passed through the
courtyard and hall without catching sight of a petticoat served to calm
him a little. He ate so fast that he had almost caught up with the
current stage of the table d'hote, when a slight commotion in the room
drew his attention.

His chair was so placed that the door and the greater portion of the
long _salle a manger_ were behind him, yet it was not necessary to turn
round to know that the same person he had passed in the dark passage had
now come into the room. He felt the presence long before he heard or saw
any one. Then he became aware that the old men, the only other guests,
were rising one by one in their places, and exchanging greetings with
some one who passed among them fro