is
Louis d'Arragon."

"Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le--"

But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.

He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where a
fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low ceiling
were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with ice an inch
thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would have been dark but
for the leaping flames of the fire.

"You will go back to Dantzig," he asked, "at once?"

He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared
that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they stood,
looking downward to the fire--alone in a world that heeded them not, and
would forget them in a week--and made their choice of a life.

"Yes," she answered.

He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and
matter-of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one
who deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good
is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new name.
He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted from one
object to another, as men's eyes do who think of action and not of
thought. This was the sailor--second to none in the shallow
northern sea, where all marks had been removed, and every light
extinguished--accustomed to facing danger and avoiding it, to foresee
remote contingencies and provide against them, day and night, week
in, week out; a sailor, careful and intrepid. He had the air of being
capable of that concentration without which no man can hope to steer a
clear course at all.

"The horses that brought you from Marienwerder will not be fit for the
road till to-morrow morning," he said. "I will take you back to Thorn at
once, and--leave you there with Barlasch."

He glanced towards her, and she nodded, as if acknowledging the sureness
and steadiness of the hand at the helm.

"You can start early to-morrow morning, and be in Dantzig to-morrow
night."

They stood side by side in silence for some minutes. He was still
thinking of her journey--of the dangers and the difficulties of that
longer journey through life without landmark or light to guide her.

"And you?" she asked curtly.

He did not reply at once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat,
which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her
lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands