“It’s like you to say that,” cried Triona. “I shall always remember. When I get back I shall let you know.”
So Alexis Triona vanished from a uninspiring Medlow, and two months afterwards gave Olifant his address at the Vanloo Hotel. Olifant, tired by a long spell of close work, went up for an idle week in London.
“Come back and carry on as before,” he suggested.
But Triona ran his fingers through his brown hair and held out his hand.
“No. The wise man never tries to repeat a past pleasure. As a wise old Russian friend of mine used to say—never relight a cigar.”
So after a few days of pleasant companionship in the soberer delights of town, Blaise Olifant returned to Medlow and Triona remained in his little back room in the Vanloo Hotel.
One night, a week or so after his visit to Olivia Gale, he threw down his pen, read over the last sheet that he had written, and, with a gesture of impatience, tore it up. Suddenly he discovered that he could not breathe in the stuffy bedroom. He drew back the curtains and opened the window and looked out on myriad chimney-pots and a full moon shining on them from a windless sky. The bright air filled his lungs. Desire for wider spaces beneath the moon shook him like a touch of claustrophobia. He thrust on the coat which he had discarded, seized a hat, and, switching off the light, hurried from the room. He went out into the streets, noiseless save for the rare, swift motors that flashed by like ghosts fleeing terrified from some earthly doom.
He walked and walked until he suddenly realized that he had emerged from Whitehall and faced the moonlight beauty of the Houses of Parliament standing in majestic challenge against the sky, and the Abbey sleeping in its centuries of dreams.
Away across the Square, by Broad Sanctuary, was the opening of a great thoroughfare, and, as his eyes sought it, he confessed to himself the subconscious impulse that had led him thither. Yet was it not a cheat of a subconscious impulse? Had he not gone out from the hotel in Kensington with a definite purpose? As he crossed to Broad Sanctuary and the entrance to Victoria Street, he argued it out with himself. Anyhow, it was the most fool of fool-errands. But yet—he shrugged his shoulders and laughed. To what errand could a fool’s errand be comparable? Only to that of one pixy-led. He laughed at the thought of his disquisition to Olivia on the Will-o’-the-Wisp. In the rare instances of the follower of Faith had he not proclaimed its guidance to the Land of Promise?