me--Hotel Meurice,
Rue de Rivoli I will write it for you. And now I must go apout my work.
I am encaged in ten minutes.'

Paul paid the bill, slipped Darco's address into his waistcoat pocket,
shook hands with him at the door, and walked away, unconscious, to his
life's undoing.

CHAPTER XIV

The voice of the river spoke from the great gorge in accents of
exultation and despair, and the voice was a part of the primeval
silence, as it had been from the moment when the Solitary had first
listened to it. The impalpable, formless brown fog was about him Its
acrid scent of burning was in his nostrils. And, all the same, he was in
Paris, in the Rue de Quenailles, where he had lived so long, and where
he had begun the real troubles of his lifetime.

He saw and heard as if he had been there. The street was lined on either
side with picturesque houses of an ancient date, the fronts of which
were parcel-coloured, blue, pink, buff, white, green, all worn into a
varied grayish harmony by years of exposure to the weather. The cobbled
roadway was drenched in sunlight, and the green jalousies on the sunny
side of the street had their own effect on the physiognomy of the
thoroughfare.

Paul made his way towards his hotel, foreboding nothing, but full
of youth and high spirits, and somewhat unfairly inspired by wine,
considering the hour of the day. He was aware of this, and his one
desire was to reach his own cool and shadowed chamber, and there sleep
himself back into a sober possession of his faculties. Had any person
suggested to him that he was tipsy, he would have had a right to repel
the accusation with scorn. He walked without hesitation or uncertainty;
he saw quite clearly and thought quite clearly. He had taken a glass
more champagne than was entirely good for him, and that was all. Had the
thing happened after dinner, he would simply have put on the brake for
the rest of the evening, and would have carried his load with ease. As
it was, nothing but a nap was needed to bring him back to a comfortable
afternoon sensation. He told himself this as he strolled homeward,
tasting his cigar in an occasional whiff, but using it mainly as a sort
of fairy baton with which to beat time to the spirit ditties of no tune
which filled his harmless mind.

On the side of the street on which he walked he saw the figure of a
girl, but he took no especial notice of her until he was almost in the
act of passing. Then he noticed that