It was nearly two o’clock when he finally put his empty purse away and rose to his feet.
“Messieurs,” he said, with a little bow to the directeur and the chef de partie, “I have to thank you for a very pleasant evening.”
And he walked calmly to the door, got his hat and coat from the vestiaire, and went out into the night.
PART V.—FRIDAY
CHAPTER XXIV
AN AFFAIR OF STATE
SELDEN took train for Nice next morning with a sense of impending calamity. He was greatly depressed. The emotional events of the previous evening had overtaxed his nerves. He had slept badly, disturbed by elusively threatening dreams, and his brain was muggy and distraught. He was almost sorry he had not heeded his impulse to run away—to leave his lamp unlit! He doubted more and more whether its feeble rays would ever guide him out of the labyrinth in which he was madly wandering, and from which there seemed to be no way of escape.
The train he had caught was a local, and as it bumped its leisurely way along, he had time to review his position over a contemplative pipe; but the more he considered it, the worse it seemed to grow; turn it as he might, he could discover no bright side. Of one thing only he was certain: his life would never again be the calm and satisfactory thing it had been. A few days had changed it beyond recognition: it was no longer simple: it was incredibly complex. He could scarcely believe that only eighty hours had elapsed since he had walked into the lounge of the Hotel de Paris to meet the Countess Rémond.
At Nice, the passengers were hurried across the tracks, for the Rome-Paris express had been signalled, and as he gave up his ticket to the guard at the exit, Selden’s eye caught a familiar figure. It was Halsey, walking nervously up and down in the waiting-room, pausing now and then to watch the people pouring from the train-shed. His eyes met Selden’s for an instant, but he gave no sign of recognition. He was rather a pitiable figure, his face grey and drawn, his eyes shot with blood—evidently his affair with the countess was not progressing smoothly. Well, he was only getting what he deserved, Selden told himself, as he turned away.
It still lacked fifteen minutes of the hour named by the baron; so, deciding that the walk would do him good, Selden turned briskly down the Avenue des Victoires toward the sea. The street was swarming, as usual, with tourists and winter residents, whose presence there was always an insoluble mystery to Selden. He never could understand why any one would want to spend a winter at Nice, when there were so many other places up and down the coast infinitely more attractive. It was the herd instinct, he decided, which brought these thousands of people here to spend their vacations in an inordinately expensive hotel or a dingy pension, with nothing to do except walk up and down the Promenade des Anglais, or look sadly on at the laboriously manufactured gaieties.
He found the Promenade a solid mass of people moving in two slow currents, one up, one down, for this was the fashionable hour to get out and take the sun and exhibit one’s new gown, which some man somewhere had somehow procured the money for. Truly, human nature is a curious thing!