omprehensible anxiety as I resumed my place by his side.

"If monsieur is ready," he suggested, "perhaps we had better go."

I rose to my feet reluctantly.

"As you will, Louis," I said.

But the time for our departure had not yet come!

CHAPTER V

SATISFACTION

During the whole of the time people had been coming and going from the
restaurant, not, perhaps, in a continual stream, but still at fairly
regular intervals. It seemed to me, who had watched them all with
interest, that scarcely a person had entered who was not worthy of
observation. I saw faces, it is true, which I had seen before at the
fashionable haunts of Paris, upon the polo ground, at Longchamps, or
in the Bois, yet somehow it seemed to me that they came to this place
as different beings. There was a tense look in their faces, a look
almost of apprehension, as they entered and passed out,--as of people
who have found their way a little further into life than their
associates. Louis was right. There was something different about the
place, something at which I could only dimly guess, which at that time
I did not understand. Only I realized that I watched always with a
little thrill of interest whenever the hurrying forward of Monsieur
Carvin indicated the arrival of a new visitor.

We had already risen to go, and the _vestiaire_ was on his way
towards us, bearing my hat and coat, when Monsieur Carvin, who had
hurried out a moment before, reappeared, ushering in a new
arrival. The events that followed have always seemed a little confused
to me. My first thought was that this was indeed a nightmare into
which I had wandered. The slight unreality which had hung like a cloud
over the whole of the evening, the strangeness of my being there with
such a companion, the curious atmosphere of the place, which so far
had completely puzzled me,--these things may all have served to
heighten the illusion. Yet it seemed to me then that, dreaming or
waking, this thing with which I was confronted was the last
impossibility. I suppose that I must have stared at him like some
wild creature, for the conversation around us suddenly stopped.
Standing upon the threshold, looking around him with the happy air of
an habitue, I saw this man to whom I owed my presence in Paris, this
man concerning whom I had sworn that if ever I should meet him face to
face my hand should be upon his throat. I remember nothing of my
progress, but I know that I stood before him bef