"Well," Mills began again, "you may oversleep yourself."

This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands at
the lower end of the Cannebiere. He looked very burly as he walked away
from me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was very full of
confused images, but I was really too tired to think.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to oversleep myself or
not: that is, whether he really took sufficient interest to care. His
uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me to tell. And I
can hardly remember my own feelings. Did I care? The whole recollection
of that time of my life has such a peculiar quality that the beginning
and the end of it are merged in one sensation of profound emotion,
continuous and overpowering, containing the extremes of exultation, full
of careless joy and of an invincible sadness--like a day-dream. The
sense of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of
imagination is all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had
something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that
didn't cast any shadow before.

Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. They were, in
truth, commonplace. What to my backward glance seems startling and a
little awful is their punctualness and inevitability. Mills was
punctual. Exactly at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the lofty
portal of the Hotel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting grey
suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere.

How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a shadowy conviction of
his inherent distinction of mind and heart, far beyond any man I have
ever met since. He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid
him. The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up
before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember
now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment's
hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such
was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

After we had gone a little way I couldn't help saying to him with a
bashful laugh: "You know, it seems very extraordinary that I should be
driving out with you like this."

He turned to look at me and in his kind voice:

"You will find everything extremely simple," he said. "So simple that
you will be quite able to hold yo