"It never struck me that she was jealous," he remarked simply.

He took his coffee-cup to the rickety sofa and sat down with the sigh of
a tired man. I took mine to the chair by the stove, and we drank
silently. I have never felt so hopelessly miserable in my life as I did
that night. I was old enough, or perhaps rather I had gathered
experience enough, to feel a shock of disgust at Paragot's return _in
volutabro luti_. In what sordid den had he found shelter these last days
of reaction? I shuddered, and loving him I hated myself for shuddering.
Yet I understood. He was a man of extremes. Having fled from the
intolerable virtues of Melford, with the nostalgia of the vagabond life
devouring him like a flame, he could not have been expected to return
tamely to the Rue des Saladiers. He had plunged head foremost into the
depths. But Bubu le Vainqueur! The Latin Quarter was not exactly a
Sunday School; very probably it flirted with Bubu's lady companions; but
between Bubu and itself it raised an impassable barrier.

The idyll too was over. He had left my dear lady Joanna without drum or
trumpet. As my destiny hung with his, I should never behold her adored
face again. All the graciousness seemed suddenly to be swept out of my
life. I pictured her forsaken, heartbroken, for the second time, weeping
bitterly over this repetition of history, and including me in her
indictment of my master. At nineteen we are all presumptuous egotists:
if I mixed pity for myself with sorrow for Joanna and dismay for my
master, I am not too greatly to be blamed. The best emotions of older,
wiser and better men than I are often blends of queer elements.

The romance was dead. There was no more Joanna. I broke down and shed
tears into my coffee-cup.

Paragot snored.

CHAPTER XXII

I SPENT the night on the sofa, as the only bed in the establishment
belonged to Paragot. The next morning I took my scanty belongings to my
old attic, which fortunately happened to be unlet, and left my master in
undisturbed possession of his apartment. In the evening, calling to make
polite inquiries as to his health, I found him still in bed looking
grimier and bristlier than the night before.

"My son," said he, "the bread of liberty is sweet, but when you are
starving you should not over-eat yourself. An old French writer says:

'_Apres le plaisir vient la peine,
Apres la peine la vertu._'

I've had the pain that follows pleasu