y by her side, but she dared not stop a moment lest some
other man with abhorrent eyes should approach her.

She set her teeth and walked; walked across the Seine without a glance
at its misted lights blinking through the rain, walked on past the
prison of Marie Antoinette, without a thought of that other harmless
woman who had loved bright and lovely things while others suffered:
walked on upon the bridge across the Seine again. This bewildered her,
making her think that she was so dazed she had doubled on her tracks.
She saw, a long way off, a solitary hooded sergent de ville, and
dragged herself across an endless expanse of wet asphalt to ask him
her way. But just before she reached him, she remembered suddenly that
of course she was on the island and was obliged to cross the Seine
again before reaching the right bank. She returned weary and
disheartened to her path, crossed the bridge, and then endlessly,
endlessly, set one heavy foot before the other under the glare of
innumerable electric lights staring down on her and on the dismal,
wet, and deserted streets. The clocks she passed told her that it
was nearly eight o'clock. Then it was past eight. What must they be
thinking of her on the Rue de Presbourg? She tried again to hurry, but
could force her aching muscles to no more than the plod, plod, plod of
her dogged advance over those interminable miles of pavement. There
was little of her then that was not cold, weary, wet flesh, suffering
all the discomforts that an animal can know. She counted her steps for
a long time, and became so stupidly absorbed in this that she made a
wrong turning and was blocks out of her way before she noticed her
mistake. This mishap reduced her almost to tears, and it was when she
was choking them weakly back and setting herself again to the cruel
long vista of the Champs-Elysees that an automobile passed her at top
speed with a man's face pressed palely to the panes. Almost at once
the car stopped in answer to a shouted command; it whirled about
and bore down on her. Felix Morrison sprang out and ran to her with
outstretched arms, his rich voice ringing through the desolation of
the rain and the night--"Sylvia! Sylvia! Are you safe?"

He almost carried her back to the car, lifted her in. There were
wraps there, great soft, furry, velvet wraps which he cast about her,
murmuring broken ejaculations of emotion, of pity, of relief--"Oh,
your hands, how cold! Sylvia, how _could_ you? He