y-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise
of a quarrel between some Frenchmen farther up the street. Whenever
the tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. I had bought
another evening paper on my way. I unfolded it. My eyes gazed ever
away from it to the clock over the kitchen door.

Five minutes now to the hour! I remembered that clocks in restaurants
are kept five minutes fast. I concentrated my eyes on the paper. I
vowed I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at its
full width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it.
Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draft, I told myself.

My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not drop
them--now. I had a suspicion, I had a certainty. Well, what, then?
What else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper.
Only the sound of Berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me,
forced me, to drop it, and to utter:

"What shall we have to eat, Soames?"

"Il est souffrant, ce pauvre Monsieur Soames?" asked Berthe.

"He's only--tired." I asked her to get some wine--Burgundy--and
whatever food might be ready. Soames sat crouched forward against the
table exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had
never moved--he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice in
the afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his
journey was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong in
our estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horribly
right was horribly clear from the look of him. But, "Don't be
discouraged," I falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that you--didn't
leave enough time. Two, three centuries hence, perhaps--"

"Yes," his voice came; "I've thought of that."

"And now--now for the more immediate future! Where are you going to
hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from Charing
Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don't go on to Paris. Stop at
Calais. Live in Calais. He'd never think of looking for you in
Calais."

"It's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with an
ass." But I was not offended. "And a treacherous ass," he strangely
added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been
holding in his hand. I glanced at the writing on it--some sort of
gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

"Come, Soames, pull yourself together! This i