afe slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar
of voices that had burst out with his going....

Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed
by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by
what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can
I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are
dealing with the inexplicable....

When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and,
smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay
with you."

"You must not," Grimshaw answered.

"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. _C'est ca_. That is
that! Besides, I must love someone--I mean, do for someone. You think
that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows
you. I stay here."

Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went
beyond.... I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they
have always called me--an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to
his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory!
Eternity!"

The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back
into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So
she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to
herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and
lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he
witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing
he knew--he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had
shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the
mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the
incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his
personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He
heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without
opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "_Eh bien_."
And she stayed.

She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever
Grimshaw was, there also was Marie--little, swarthy, broad of cheek
and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She
cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended
his clothes, watched out for his health--often, I am convinced, she
stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed,
beyond the fact that she was there and that she made