Upon the old-fashioned shutter which folded back in the window recess I made out a long name, clumsily cut and half obliterated by paint.
"What do you make of it?"
"It's not very distinct. There's a C and a V."
"I'll read it for you. It's 'C. Gaillard de Valbonette.' That thing at the top is meant for a coronet. Some French émigré had this room a hundred years ago, and amused himself by cutting his name. All this quarter swarmed with them at one time—Golden Square, Broad Street, King Street. Can't you imagine him at work here for a whole Sunday morning, with a nice pea-soup fog out in the square, and speculating about his wife or sweetheart in the Conciergerie. He's great company at times, is M. de Valbonette."
"I think you live too much alone, Ingram," I said.
He put down the lamp. "I wonder do I?" he said, twisting his beard. "But it's Satan reproving sin."
"Let's club lonelinesses, then," I answered impulsively. "I know what I'll have to put up with by now. Remember the old warning, 'Vae Soli!' If nothing else in the classics were true, that is."
"No," he said, roughly, "it's the wrong time. How can I afford a friend when I'm throwing out ballast all around. And besides"—he seemed to struggle with an invincible repugnance to speak—"Prentice, I'm living on money a woman—gives me."
"Oh!" Shocked as I was, I tried to keep my voice flat and toneless. Even as it escaped me, the exclamation was rather a request for further enlightenment.
"You won't repeat your invitation now?"