ded by his presence.

"He belongs to a ship," said the manager. Then he solved the question
with a burst.

"I will look after him myself." He ran into the hall and called Raft to
come with him; then, followed by Cleo, he led the way to a sitting-room,
a most elegant sitting-room upholstered in blue silk.

"Here," said he to the sea lion, "will you take your seat and dejeuner
will be served to you."

"I have to leave you for a bit," said Cleo, putting her hand on his arm,
"I won't be long."

"I'll wait for you," said Raft. He was a bit amazed at all the new
things around him and blissfully unconscious of trouble. He threw his
cap on a chair and took his pipe from his pocket, the same old pipe he
had lit that night on the ledge of the sea-corridor, then he produced a
plug of tobacco, the same tobacco whose pungent fume had comforted her
there, with the sound of the hungry sea coming through the dark.

Then he sat down on a silk covered chair and the manager and the girl
went out.

"I will serve him myself," said the manager. "I understand; he is a
brave man but very rough; the servants do not understand these things.
It is a difficulty, but after--? Mademoiselle--after?"

"After what?"

"After he has had his meal?"

She understood. After he had been fed he was to go. He could go, say, to
a sailors' lodging house; she had heard of such things. Or, he would
walk about the streets; the thing was quite simple. It was only right to
give him a good meal and some money, a good round sum, seeing all he had
done for her.

She was scarcely heeding the manager. She was viewing, full face, the
truth that the manager had demonstrated to her clearly. Raft was
impossible. She had had vague ideas of bringing him to Paris and giving
him a room for himself in her house on the Avenue Malakoff. She had
never thought of the servants, she had thought of her friends and that
they would think her conduct queer. But she saw everything now quite
straight and in a dry light. Raft was shipwrecked on a social state; to
keep company with him she would have to renounce everything and live on
his level; she could not treat him as a servant; even if she could,
servants would resent him. He was not of their type, much lower, a
labouring man from the sea. Not to lose him as he was to her she would
have to enter the absolutely impossible and absurd, she would have to
give up social life and make a world of her own with Raft. With a man
whose