He took his companion to a café near the Madeleine, where he insisted upon her taking a large cup of coffee and a roll. It was all he could persuade her to take, and she begged to be allowed to sit at one of the tables outside the café.
“She might see her father go by,” she said, “on his way to the Rue de l’Archevêque.”
The two friends sat at a little iron table rather apart from the groups of animated loungers sitting at other tables drinking coffee and lemonade. But George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane did not pass that way throughout the half hour during which Eleanor lingered over her cup of coffee.
It was past ten o’clock when Richard Thornton bade her good night at the threshold of the little door beside the butcher’s shop.
“You must promise me not to sit up to-night, Nelly,” he said, as he shook hands with her.
“Yes, Richard.”
“And mind you keep your promise this time. I will come and see you early to-morrow. God bless you, my dear, and good night!”
He pressed her hand tenderly. When she had closed the door behind her, he crossed the narrow street, and waited upon the other side of the way until he saw a light in one of the entresol windows. He watched while Eleanor came to this window and drew a dark curtain across it, and then he walked slowly away.
“God bless her, poor child,” he murmured, in a low, compassionate voice, “poor lonely child!”
The grave thoughtfulness of his expression never changed as he walked homewards to the Hôtel des Deux Mondes. Late as it was when he reached his chamber on the fifth story, he seated himself at the table, and pushing aside his clay pipe and tobacco-pouch, his water-colours and brushes, his broken palettes and scraps of Bristol board, and all the litter of his day’s work, he took a few sheets of foreign letter paper and a bottle of ink from a shabby leather desk, and began to write.