s the flash of companionship in
her eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from my
desolation. Then came amazement and reaction. I turned about and went on
my way, and saw her no more.

But afterwards, later, I went out into the streets of Paris bent upon
finding that woman. She had become a hope, a desire.

I looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps or
two hours. I went along, peering at the women's faces, through the
blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickering
reflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-moving
adventurous human beings. I crossed streams of traffic, paused at
luminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon me
from above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... My first intentness
upon one person, so that I disregarded any distracting intervention,
gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of the
things about me. That original woman became as it were diffused. I began
to look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind the
panes of the cafes, and even on the terraces--for the weather was still
dry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces for the most part
animated by a sort of shallow eagerness. Many were ugly, many vile with
an intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almost
gracious. There was something pathetic and appealing for me in this
great sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weak
community of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came to me a sense
of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. From an outer darkness
of unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither--as
I had come.

I was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters out
of which long since it came, into the light and air. It was as if old
forgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral
memories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for
life about me....

Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear poured
over me. This vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... I
hailed a passing _fiacre_, went straight to my little hotel, settled my
account with the proprietor, and caught a night train for Switzerland.

All night long my head ached, and I lay awake swaying and jolting and
listening to the rhythms of the wheels, Paris clean forgotten so