moist protuberant eyes, had come up
where she stood there, alone, motionless on the public street. He put
his arm in hers, clasped her hand in a fat, soft palm, and, "_Allons,
ma belle!_" he said with a revolting gayety.

Sylvia pulled away from him, cried out fiercely in English, "Don't you
dare to touch me!" and darted away.

He made no attempt at pursuit, acknowledging his mistake with an easy
shrug and turning off to roam, a dim, predatory figure, along the
dusky street. He had startled and frightened the girl so that she was
trembling when she ventured to slow down to a walk under the glaring
lights of the Boulevard St. Michel. She was also shivering with wet
and cold, and without knowing it, she was extremely hungry. As she
fled along the boulevard in the direction of her own quarter of the
city, her eye caught the lighted clock at the kiosk near Cluny. She
was astonished to see that it was after seven o'clock. How long could
she have stood there, under the shadow of that terrific Thinker,
consumed quite as much as he by the pain of trying to rise above mere
nature? An hour--more than an hour, she must have been there. The
Pantheon must have closed during that time, and the dreadful, sick
man must have passed close by her. Where was he now? What makeshift
shelter harbored that cough, those dirty, skeleton hands, those awful
eyes which had outlived endurance and come to know peace before death....

She shivered and tried to shrink away from her wet, clinging clothing.
She had never, in all her life before, been wet and cold and hungry
and frightened, she had never known from what she had been protected.
And now the absence of money meant that she must walk miles in the
rain before she could reach safety and food. For three cents she could
ride. But she had not three cents. How idiotic she had been not to
keep a few sous from her purse. What a sickening thing it had been to
see him stoop to pick it up after he had tried to have the pride not
to touch it. That was what morphine had done for him. And he would buy
more morphine with that money, that was the reason he had not been
able to let it lie ... the man who had been to her little girlhood the
radiant embodiment of strength and fineness!

Her teeth were chattering, her feet soaked and cold. She tried to walk
faster to warm her blood, and discovered that she was exhausted, tired
to the marrow of her bones. Her feet dragged on the pavement, her arms
hung heavil