yet when, later on, that morning--though no later indeed
than for his coming forth at ten o'clock--he saw the concierge produce,
on his approach, a petit bleu delivered since his letters had been sent
up, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel. He
then knew he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more
likely, after all, than not; and this would be precisely the early
sign. He took it so for granted that he opened the petit bleu just
where he had stopped, in the pleasant cool draught of the
porte-cochere--only curious to see where the young man would, at such a
juncture, break out. His curiosity, however, was more than gratified;
the small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached without attention
to the address, not being from the young man at all, but from the
person whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while.
Worth while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the
big one on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a
fear of the danger of delay. He might have been thinking that if he
didn't go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all. He at
any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very
deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly
than harshly. He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form of
a petit bleu--which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,
inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own communication, it consisted
of the fewest words. She had asked him if he could do her the very
great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine, and
he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present himself
at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript, to the
effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he
preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at
all half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already
seen her best. He mightn't see her at all; that was one of the
reflexions he made after writing and before he dropped his closed card
into the box; he mightn't see any one at all any more at all; he might
make an end as well now as ever, leaving things as they were, since he
was doubtless not to leave them better, and taking his way home so far
as should appear that a home remained to him. This alternative was for
a few minutes so sharp that if he at last did de