I stared at the burnt-out cigarette, reflecting bitterly.
“I should never have come back to this Paris. It just makes me unhappy. At every turn of the street I expect to suddenly come face to face with her. I can’t bear to visit the rive gauche. It’s haunted for me. I see myself as I was then, swinging my old cherry-wood cane as I strode so buoyantly along the quays. Every foot of that old Latin Quarter has its memory. I can’t go there again. It’s too painful.”
I rose and paced up and down the room.
“God! wasn’t I happy though! Remember the afternoons in the Luxembourg and the Bal Bullier, and the Boul’ Mich’. How I loved it all! How I used to linger gazing at the old houses! How I used to dream, and thrill, and gladden! Oh, the wonder of the Seine by night, the work, the struggle, the visits to the Mont-de-Piété, the careless God-given Bohemian days! It hurts me now to think of them.... It hurts me....”
Going over to the mantelpiece I leaned one elbow on it, looking down drearily at the fire.
“Ah, Little Thing! How glad she always was when I came home! I can feel her arms round my neck as she welcomed me, feel her soft kisses, see the little room all bright and cheery. Oh, if these days would only come again! Where is she now, I wonder? Poor, poor Little Thing.”
As I stood there like a man stricken, miserable beyond all words, suddenly I started. All the blood seemed to leave my heart. Some one was talking to the butler in the hall.
“Is Madam in please? I have bring some leetle hem-broderie she want see. She tell me to come now.”
Just a tired, quiet, colourless voice, interrupted by a sudden cough, yet oh, how sweet, how heaven-sweet to me! Again I listened.
“Oh, she have gone out. I am so sorry. She have made appointment wiz me for now and I have not much time. I will leave my hem-broderie for Madam to regard. Then I will call again to-morrow.”