Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/242

230 When I arrived there I found that I had abundance of time. I began to walk up and down the hall, still thinking profoundly. At last this came: 'The next evening I met the Professor at the Gare du Nord as we had arranged, and (he, at the end of our walk up and down in the hall There we turned, there he began to speak—commending Rosy to my care as a last sudden thought that …'

Sudden thoughts came quickly now. I paced up and down. A porter with my portmanteau came to me to remind me that it was time to be getting my luggage weighed and myself on to the platform. We went up the hall together. I looked at the clock. He was right. I made one big step forward, and stopped. He passed me, and stopped too, but not as I had done.

'Thanks,' I said, 'I shall not go to-night.'

'Good, sir,' he said.

'If you will put that into a cab,' I said, 'I will be back in a moment.'

'Very well, sir,' he said.

'I went off to the telegraph office, where I wrote on a form: Lady Gwatkin, 22 Balmoral Street, London, and B. Leicester, Paris, and (in French) I cannot come. Then, when the clerk had shown me that he understood it aright, I returned to my porter and the portmanteau in the cab.

When I arrived at the Avenue de Fontenoi, I did not look up at either balcony or window, but got down with my portmanteau and, having paid the man, went slowly in. As the impulse to look up had been denied, so was that to ask at the concierge's if she had gone out. But the concierge came forth to proffer carrying up the portmanteau; and I surrendered it to him. Up, then, I went slowly, deliberately, with mechanical limping foot. At the second story some one came out, a man, and descended upon me: when, through the mutual choosing of first one side and then the other, there was a moment's delay. I cared not. Up I went again slowly, deliberately, with mechanical limping foot; till I reached our third story, and the door, and had unlocked it, and gone in, and drawn it to quietly. What then? The passage in the red light of the