aid the pure recesses of her heart and soul open
to the inspection of a human eye, Gertrude had done so. He was confident
that he knew her, and it seemed to him that no two hearts had ever lived
together in an intimacy at once so chaste and fiery. Gertrude a flirt?
The tenderness she had shown him that night a pretence? The thing was
so incredible and ridiculous that it was not worth while to bother
one's brains with it for even the fraction of a minute. He had found his
soul's partner--the twin Half of the Pear--and he was more than content
with his discovery.

Whether Ralston meant much or little, whether, indeed, he virtually
meant nothing or anything, Paul could not guess; but he was uneasy
beneath the humorous gravity of the elder's eye, and he changed the
theme. They had a good hour together, and shook hands and parted with
a mutual liking, and at the instant at which he reached the street Paul
was free to take up his station at his end of the telepathic wire and to
call Gertrude to the other. He walked miles and miles whilst engaged in
this wholesome and reasonable enterprise, and at length, without in
the least knowing how he had got there, found himself, dog-tired, in a
strange quarter of the city. He rambled on until he met a gendarme, who
put him upon his way, and within ten minutes of this encounter he
awoke with a start to the fact that he was pacing the pavement of the
thoroughfare in which he had first seen Annette. The interregnum
of fatigue which had come in between his passionate dreams and this
reminder of the sordid realities of his lot went for nothing. The dream
and the truth flashed together like the electric opposites in clouds and
awoke a rare thunderstorm within doors. But by the time he had got to
his hotel this was over, and he crawled wearily upstairs to a fireless
room, the air of which struck chill and lonely. The apartment in itself
was well enough, and not many years before he would have thought it
palatial in its stateliness and luxury; but he would have given a
thousand pounds at that instant if he could have translated himself to
the old kitchen hearth at home and into the sight of the old familiar
faces. He had taken a little champagne before dinner, a moderate
allowance of wine in the course of the meal, and two rather liberal
tumblers of whisky-and-soda with Ralston. This was not the direction
in which he was accustomed to approach excess, but he remembered gladly
that he had a car