s saw it.
"This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw. The
style is identical." Waram saw it. He read everything that Pilleux
wrote--with eagerness, with terror. Finally, driven by curiosity, he
went to Paris, got Pilleux's address from the editor of _Gil Blas_,
and started for Africa.

Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last. You see him faintly--an exile,
racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face
wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning. Marie says that he
prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head
thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars. He wrote in the cool
hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes
and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris.

One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently: "Why
don't you get a lover? Take life while you can."

"You say there is eternal life," she protested.

"_N'en doutez-pas_! But you must be rich in knowledge. Put flowers in
your hair. And place your palms against a lover's palms and kiss him
with generosity, _ma petite_. I am not a man; I am a shadow."

Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her
lips against his. "_Je t'aime_," she said simply.

His eyes deepened. There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the
old vitality, the old passion for beauty. The look faded, leaving his
eyes "like flames that are quenched." Marie shivered, covered her face
with her hands, and ran out. "There was no blood in him," she told me.
"He was like a spirit--a ghost. So meagre! So wan! Waxen hands. Yellow
flesh. And those eyes, in which, _monsieur_, the flame was quenched!"

And this is the end of the curious story.... Waram went to Biskra and
from there to the village where Grimshaw lived. Grimshaw saw him in
the street one evening and followed him to the hotel. He lingered
outside until Waram had registered at the _bureau_ and had gone to his
room. Then he went in and sent word that "Pierre Pilleux was below and
ready to see Doctor Waram."

He waited in the "garden" at the back of the hotel. No one was about.
A cat slept on the wall. Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with
orange light. Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes.
It was breathless, hot, quiet. He thought: "Waram has come because
Dagmar is dead. Or the public has found me out!"

Waram came immediately. He stood in the doorway a moment, stari