h me, eh? You aren't
'shamed of me?'

'You are hurting me,' I said coldly, 'with your elbow.'

'Oh, a thousand pardons! a thous' parnds, Magda! That isn't your real
name, is it?'

He sat upright and turned his face to glance at mine with a fatuous
smile; but I would not look at him. I kept my eyes straight in
front. Then a swerve of the carriage swung his body away from me,
and he subsided into the corner. The intoxication was gaining on him
every minute.

'What shall I do with him?' I thought.

I blushed as we drove up the Avenue de l'Opera and across the Grand
Boulevard, for it seemed to me that all the gay loungers must observe
Diaz' condition. We followed darker thoroughfares, and at last the cab,
after climbing a hill, stopped before a house in a street that appeared
rather untidy and irregular. I got out first, and Diaz stumbled after me,
while two women on the opposite side of the road stayed curiously to
watch us. Hastily I opened my purse and gave the driver a
five-franc-piece, and he departed before Diaz could decide what to say. I
had told him to go.

I did not wish to tell the driver to go. I told him in spite of myself.

Diaz, grumbling inarticulately, pulled the bell of the great door of the
house. But he had to ring several times before finally the door opened;
and each second was a year for me, waiting there with him in the street.
And when the door opened he was leaning against it, and so pitched
forward into the gloom of the archway. A laugh--the loud, unrestrained
laugh of the courtesan--came from across the street.

The archway was as black as night.

'Shut the door, will you?' I heard Diaz' voice. 'I can't see it.
Where are you?'

But I was not going to shut the door.

'Have you got a servant here?' I asked him.

'She comes in the mornings,' he replied.

'Then there is no one in your flat?'

'Not a shoul,' said Diaz. 'Needn't be 'fraid.'

I'm not afraid,' I said. 'But I wanted to know. Which floor is it?'

'Third. I'll light a match.'

Then I pushed to the door, whose automatic latch clicked. We were fast in
the courtyard.

Diaz dropped his matches in attempting to strike one. The metal box
bounced on the tiles. I bent down and groped with both hands till I found
it. And presently we began painfully to ascend the staircase, Diaz
holding his umbrella and the rail, and I striking matches from time to
time. We were on the second landing when I heard the bell ring again, and
the