He saw her in all her alluring languor, secret, and mysterious. And it was the eternal mystery in her that attracted him. For a few moments he hesitated, indeterminately, at the telephone. "Eh bien, mon vieux," called Charnac's voice. "Will you come? 11.30 at the Chariot d'Or."
"I'll come," said Humphrey.
It was ten-thirty. Ripples of unrest stirred his mind; he felt deeply agitated. He knew that he was on the brink of a new and complex development in his life; and the future stretched before him, vague and impenetrable, full of a promise of mournful and fierce delights, of happiness inconceivable, and sorrow inexperienced. No scruples retarded him now, and the voice of conscience was stilled, but despite all this, an indefinable mist of melancholy clouded his soul.
Dagneau came briskly into the office. Humphrey ceased brooding, and swung round in his chair.
"Lamb," he said, "I'm going out to supper to-night."
"Oh! la! la!" Dagneau laughed. "Who's the lucky lady?"
"Not for the likes of little lambs that have to stay in the office and keep the fort."
Dagneau made a grimace. "I suppose it isn't safe for both of us to leave," he said.
"No fear," Humphrey replied. "There's no knowing what these fellows mayn't be up to in the South. Anyhow, if anything urgent happens, come along to me. I shall be in the Chariot d'Or until one o'clock."
Dagneau was a good fellow, thought Humphrey, as his cab climbed the hill to Montmartre. It was jolly decent of him not to mind. He forgot the office now, and thought only of the night's adventuring. There was fully a half-hour to spare, so he idled it away on the terrace of a café sipping at a liqueur. Every variety of street hawker came to persuade sous from him: they had plaster figures for sale, or wanted to cut his silhouette in black paper, or draw a portrait of him in pastels, or sell him ballads and questionable books, bound in pink, pictorial covers. The toy of the moment, frankly indecent, yet offered with a childlike innocence that made it impossible for one to be disgusted with the vendors, was thrust before him fifty times. They showed him how it worked, and when he refused, they brought from inner pockets picture-postcards which they tried to show him covertly, until he drove them away with the argot he had learned from Dagneau.