How long he had remained at Tours he scarcely knew: suspended in this spell of time and memory, he seemed to have detached himself not only from the infinite connections that bound him to the past, but from every project and direction that he had considered for the future. Day after day he stayed in his little room above the cobbled court of the hotel; he ate his meals there, going out at nightfall to eat and drink in a café, to walk about the streets, once or twice to go home with a woman of the town, and finally to come back to his room, to write furiously for hours, and then, stretched out in bed, nailed to the rock of a furiously wakeful sleep, to live again through the immense and spaceless images of night, in an alert but comatose hypnosis of the will.

One morning he awoke with a shock of apprehension, the foreboding of calamitous mischance. It was the first time in weeks that he had taken thought of the state of his resources or felt any care or worry for the future. He counted his money with feverish haste, and discovered that less than 250 francs remained. For a moment he sat on the edge of the bed, holding the little wad of franc notes in his hand, stunned and bewildered by this sudden realization that his funds were exhausted, and for the moment not knowing what to do. His hotel bill for the week was due; he went at once to the bureau and asked for it; a hasty calculation assured him that when he had paid it, less than twenty francs would be left.

He knew no one in Tours to whom he could appeal for aid; one glance at the impeccable, cold courtesy of the female face, hard, dark and Gallic, in the bureau of the hotel — the basalt of the eyes, the line of hair across the brows — told him that he could as soon wring milk and honey from the cobble-stones as extract an ounce of charitable relief from the granite coffers of her soul. The brows drew in, the black eyes hardened with a cold narrowing of mistrust: even before he spoke he saw she had read the story of his profligate extravagance, and that from that moment the hard propriety of her suspicious soul had been turned against him with that virtuous dislike which such people feel for unmoneyed men. When he spoke, therefore, it was to tell her he was leaving that day: she inclined her dark, hard face impassively, saying: “Oui, monsieur,” and asked if he would have his room vacated by twelve o’clock.

He went to the railway station and looked up rates and distances. During the whole period of his stay in Tours — in fact, during the whole course of his wanderings since leaving Paris — he had been vaguely assured that he was moving in the general direction of Provence, Marseilles, and the South. He now discovered, on consulting a map, that he was off this course by some hundreds of kilometres, and on the southwest road to Bordeaux, the Pyrenees, and Spain. For a moment, he was decided to take the train for Bordeaux — a post card from Ann had been mailed from Carcassonne, and she had informed him that they were on their way to Biarritz. A brief inquiry, however, convinced him that his funds were by no means sufficient to get him even as far as Bordeaux and, over there, he felt, his case was more desperate than ever. He knew no one there and had no hope of meeting anyone he knew. He discovered also that the lowest fare back to Paris — the third-class fare — was about thirty-four francs, almost twice as much as he possessed.

Finally, with a feeling of malevolent joy — for, curiously, a growing realization of his plight, and the dark, hard eyes of the Frenchmen fixed on him in an expression of avaricious mistrust, had now wakened in him a jubilant indifference, a desire to roar with laughter — he thought of Orléans and the Countess.

He found that his funds were sufficient for third-class fare to Orléans, which was about seventeen francs, and that a train was leaving in an hour. Returning to the hotel, he packed his valise with frenzied haste, throwing his clothes in and stamping it down with his feet, rode to the station in the hotel’s horse-drawn bus, and an hour later was on his way back to Orléans.

Late March had come: the day was overcast with thin, grey clouds, an uncertain milky radiance of light; the fields and earth and forests, still bare, had a moist, thawed fertility that spoke of spring. On the way up, snow began to fall, a brief flurry of large, wet flakes that melted as they fell: it was soon over, and the sun broke through in thin, wavering gusts of light.

There were no other passengers in his compartment; he sat looking out of the window across the wet fields, and from time to time, as he visualized the look of startled, crafty apprehension on the Countess’s face when she saw him, he burst into wild, sudden whoops and yells of laughter that echoed loudly above the steady pounding of the wheels.

It was noon when he reached Orléans: he took his heavy bag and went limping out across the station square, pausing once to rest his aching arms and change his grip. On entering the hotel he found Yvonne in the bureau. She looked up from her ledger as he entered, her dark face hardening with a mistrust of cold surprise as she saw him.

“Monsieur has returned to stay?” she inquired, and looking towards his valise. “You wish a room?”

“I do not know yet,” he said easily. “I shall let you know in a few minutes. At present, I should like to speak to the Countess. Is she here?”

She did not answer for a moment, her black brows gathered in a line, and her eyes grew perceptibly harder, colder, more mistrustful as she looked at him.

“Yes. I s’ink she is in her room,” she said at length. “I vill see. . . . Jean!” she called sharply, and struck a bell.

The porter appeared, started with surprise when he saw the youth, and then smiled cordially and greeted him in friendly fashion. Then he turned inquiringly to Yvonne. She spoke curtly:

“Dites à Madame la Comtesse que Monsieur le jeune Américain est revenu. Il attend.”

“Mais oui, monsieur,” the porter said briskly, turning towards him. “Et votre bagage?” he looked inquiringly at the valise. “Vous restez ici?”

“Je ne sais pas. Je vous dirai plus tard. Merci,” he said, as the porter took the valise and put it away behind the office desk.

The porter departed with his message. Yvonne returned to her books, and he waited, pacing the hall in a state of nervous elation, until he heard the old woman’s voice, sharp, startled, excited, speaking to the porter on the floor above. Then he heard her coming down the stairs, turned and faced her sharply-inquiring, apprehensive face as she came down, and was vigorously pumping her uncertain and unwilling little claw, before she had time to stammer out a greeting:

“But what — why — what brings you here?” she said. “I thought you had returned to Paris by now. Where have you been?” she asked sharply.

“In Tours,” he answered.

“Tours! But what were you doing there all this time? . . . What happened to you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Ah, Countess,” he said solemnly, “it is a long story.” Then, with a deliberate burlesque of portentous gravity, he lowered his voice and whispered hoarsely, “I fell among thieves.”

“What —?” she said in a faltering tone. “What are you saying? . . . You mean you have come back here . . . that you have no . . . how much money have you left?” she demanded sharply.

He thrust his hand into his trousers pocket, fished around and pulled out a few small coins: four two-franc pieces, a franc, two twenty-five-centime coins, a ten — and a five-centime piece —

“That’s all,” he said, counting them over. “Nine francs sixty-five.”

“W-w-w-w-what?” she stammered. “Nine francs sixty-five — do you mean that’s all you have left?”

“That’s all,” he said cheerfully, “but now that I’m here at last it doesn’t matter.”

“Here!” she gasped. “Do you mean you are going — what do you intend to do?” she said sharply.

“Oh,” he said easily, “I shall wait here until I get money from America.”

“And — and how long do you think that will take?” the old woman was twisting her skinny fingers with feverish apprehension.

“Oh, not long,” he said airily. “I wrote my mother yesterday, and it ought not to take over four weeks to get an answer.”

“Four or five weeks!” the old woman said hoarsely. “What are you saying? Four or five weeks, and you have nine francs sixty-five in your pockets! My God! the man is mad!”

“Oh, that part of it will be all right, I guess,” he said with an easy laugh. “I told my mother all about you and Monsieur and Madame Vatel, and all my other friends here, and how good you had been to me, and how you were always befriending Americans, and how they call you Little Mother. I told her you couldn’t have been kinder to me if you’d been my own mother, and that she didn’t need to worry about me at all. So I guess that part of it’s all right,” he concluded comfortably. “I told her that I’d just put up here at the hotel, and that you and the Vatels would take good care of me until the money comes from home.”

“Put up here! . . . For four or five weeks! . .............