y to find a game of
bridge in strolling; it served for exercise.

"But," suggested the young man, "you might meet a blind man! Wouldn't
it be better to go straight to the club?"

"And meet one on the way there?" The Prince shook his head. "No, my
friend. That is a chance one must take. One can, however, keep one's
eyes open."

In the Place de la Concorde they actually did meet a blind man a
lean, bowed man feeling his way along the curb with a stick deftly
enough, so that, as he was on the wrong side of the sidewalk, it
would have been easy enough to brush against him in passing. It was
the Prince who first perceived him approaching. He touched Dupontel
and pointed.

"Parbleu!" exclaimed Dupontel. He looked strangely at the blind
bearer of fate and then at his companion. The Prince was smiling now,
but not in mirth.

"Let us make room for him," he said; and they stepped into the
roadway to let him pass.

What was strange was that when he came abreast of them he paused,
with his face nosing and peering in his blindness, and felt before
him with an extended hand, as if he had expected to find something in
his way. The hand and the skinny wrist, protruding from the frayed
sleeve and searching the empty air, affected Dupontel unpleasantly;
they touched the fund of credulity in him which is at the root of all
men who believe in nothing. He watched the blind man like an actor in
a scene till he moved on again, with his stick tracing the edge of
the curb and his strained face unresponsive to the sunlight.

"What was he doing?" he asked, then.

The Prince's wry smile showed again. "Doing?" he repeated, "why, he
was feeling for me."

Dupontel shrugged, but not in disapproval this time. His imagination
was burdened with a new sense of his companion's life, complex with
difficulties, haunted by portents like specters of good and evil
fortune.

"But, at all events, he did not touch you!" he said at last.

"No!" The Prince swung his cane, drawing up his tall, trim figure,
and stepping out briskly. "No, he did not touch me. They dog me,
these, these tokens of the devil; but I am not caught. It is I that
save myself. After all, mon cher, it seems possible that this may be
Carigny's bad day not mine!"

Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day;
his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. But
it was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be something
which it would be