unnecessary scruples. He had been holding
himself to a compact which no longer existed. And, all along, he had
been regarding himself as the weakling, the vacillator, when it was he
who had held out the longest! He had even, in those earlier hesitating
moments, consolingly recalled to his mind how Monsieur Blanc's modestly
denominated Societe Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Etrangers
made it a point to proffer a railway ticket to any impending wreck,
such as himself, who might drift like a stain across its roads of
merriment, or leave a telltale blot upon one of its perennially
beautiful and ever-odorous flower-beds. But now, as he reviewed those
past weeks of hesitation and inward struggle, a sense of relapse crept
over him. As he recalled the picture of the clear-cut profile between
the floating purple curtains, a vague indifference as to the final
outcome of things took possession of him.

He almost exulted in the meaning of the strange meeting, which, one
hour before, had seemed to bring the universe crashing down about his
head. Then, as his plans and thoughts took more definite shape, his
earlier recklessness merged into an almost pleasurable sense of relief
and release, of freedom after confinement. He felt incongruously
grateful for the lash that had awakened him to even illicit activity;
life, under the passion for accomplishment, under the zest for risk and
responsibility, seemed to take on its older and deeper meaning once
more. It was, he told himself, as if the foreign tongue which he had
so wearily heard on every side of him, for so long, had suddenly
translated itself into intelligibility, or as if the text beneath the
pictures in those ubiquitous illustrated papers from Paris, which he
had studied so blankly and so blindly, had suddenly become as plain as
his own English to him.

But his moment of exaltation, his mood of careless emancipation, was a
brief one. He was no longer alone in life. His bitterness of heart
had blinded him to obligations. He had not yet fathomed the mystery of
Frank's appearance. He had not yet even made sure of her relapse.
Above all, he had not put forth a hand to help her in what might be an
inexplicable extremity. The morning could still bring some word from
her. He himself would spend the day in search of her. He would have
to proceed guardedly, but he would leave no stone unturned. It was
not, he told himself, that he was giving fate one last chance