Later an idea struck him that it would save fatigue
to take a cab, and he started back with that intention, but the cabs
seemed already so far away and the lanterns were so bright and confusing
that he gave it up, and pulling himself together looked around. A shadow, a mass, huge, undefined, rose to his right. He recognized the
Arc de Triomphe and gravely shook his cane at it. Its size annoyed him. He
felt it was too big. Then he heard something fall clattering to the
pavement and thought probably it was his cane but it didn't much matter. When he had mastered himself and regained control of his right leg, which
betrayed symptoms of insubordination, he found himself traversing the
Place de la Concorde at a pace which threatened to land him at the
Madeleine. This would never do. He turned sharply to the right and
crossing the bridge passed the Palais Bourbon at a trot and wheeled into
the Boulevard St. Germain. He got on well enough although the size of the
War Office struck him as a personal insult, and he missed his cane, which
it would have been pleasant to drag along the iron railings as he passed. It occurred to him, however, to substitute his hat, but when he found it
he forgot what he wanted it for and replaced it upon his head with
gravity. Then he was obliged to battle with a violent inclination to sit
down and weep. This lasted until he came to the rue de Rennes, but there
he became absorbed in contemplating the dragon on the balcony overhanging
the Cour du Dragon, and time slipped away until he remembered vaguely that
he had no business there, and marched off again. It was slow work. The
inclination to sit down and weep had given place to a desire for solitary
and deep reflection. Here his right leg forgot its obedience and attacking
the left, outflanked it and brought him up against a wooden board which
seemed to bar his path. He tried to walk around it, but found the street
closed. He tried to push it over, and found he couldn't. Then he noticed a
red lantern standing on a pile of paving-stones inside the barrier. This
was pleasant. How was he to get home if the boulevard was blocked? But he
was not on the boulevard. His treacherous right leg had beguiled him into
a detour, for there, behind him lay the boulevard with its endless line of
lamps,--and here, what was this narrow dilapidated street piled up with
earth and mortar and heaps of stone? He looked up. Written in staring
black letters on the barrier was

RUE BARRÉE. He sat down. Two policemen whom he knew came by and advised him to get up,
but he argued the question from a standpoint of personal taste, and they
passed on, laughing. For he was at that moment absorbed in a problem. It
was, how to see Rue Barrée. She was somewhere or other in that big house
with the iron balconies, and the door was locked, but what of that? The
simple idea struck him to shout until she came. This idea was replaced by
another equally lucid,--to hammer on the door until she came; but finally
rejecting both of these as too uncertain, he decided to climb into the
balcony, and opening a window politely inquire for Rue Barrée. There was
but one lighted window in the house that he could see. It was on the
second floor, and toward this he cast his eyes. Then mounting the wooden
barrier and clambering over the piles of stones, he reached the sidewalk
and looked up at the façade for a foothold. It seemed impossible. But a
sudden fury seized him, a blind, drunken obstinacy, and the blood rushed
to his head, leaping, beating in his ears like the dull thunder of an
ocean. He set his teeth, and springing at a window-sill, dragged himself
up and hung to the iron bars. Then reason fled; there surged in his brain
the sound of many voices, his heart leaped up beating a mad tattoo, and
gripping at cornice and ledge he worked his way along the façade, clung to
pipes and shutters, and dragged himself up, over and into the balcony by
the lighted window. His hat fell off and rolled against the pane. For a
moment he leaned breathless against the railing--then the window was
slowly opened from within. They stared at each other for some time. Presently the girl took two
unsteady steps back into the room. He saw her face,--all crimsoned
now,--he saw her sink into a chair by the lamplit table, and without a
word he followed her into the room, closing the big door-like panes behind
him. Then they looked at each other in silence. The room was small and white; everything was white about it,--the
curtained bed, the little wash-stand in the corner, the bare walls, the
china lamp,--and his own face,--had he known it, but the face and neck of
Rue were surging in the colour that dyed the blossoming rose-tree there on
the hearth beside her. It did not occur to him to speak. She seemed not to
expect it. His mind was struggling with the impressions of the room. The
whiteness, the extreme purity of everything occupied him--began to trouble
him. As his eye became accustomed to the light, other objects grew from
the surroundings and took their places in the circle of lamplight. There
was a piano and a coal-scuttle and a little iron trunk and a bath-tub. Then there was a row of wooden pegs against the door, with a white chintz
curtain covering the clothes underneath. On the bed lay an umbrella and a
big straw hat, and on the table, a music-roll unfurled, an ink-stand, and
sheets of ruled paper. Behind him stood a wardrobe faced with a mirror,
but somehow he did not care to see his own face just then. He was
sobering. The girl sat looking at him without a word. Her face was expressionless,
yet the lips at times trembled almost imperceptibly. Her eyes, so
wonderfully blue in the daylight, seemed dark and soft as velvet, and the
colour on her neck deepened and whitened with every breath. She seemed
smaller and more slender than when he had seen her in the street, and
there was now something in the curve of her cheek almost infantine. When
at last he turned and caught his own reflection in the mirror behind him,
a shock passed through him as though he had seen a shameful thing, and his
clouded mind and his clouded thoughts grew clearer. For a moment their
eyes met then his sought the floor, his lips tightened, and the struggle
within him bowed his head and strained every nerve to the breaking. And
now it was over, for the voice within had spoken. He listened, dully
interested but already knowing the end,--indeed it little mattered;--the
end would always be the same for him;--he understood now--always the same
for him, and he listened, dully interested, to a voice which grew within
him. After a while he stood up, and she rose at once, one small hand
resting on the table. Presently he opened the window, picked up his hat,
and shut it again. Then he went over to the rosebush and touched the
blossoms with his face. One was standing in a glass of water on the table
and mechanically the girl drew it out, pressed it with her lips and laid
it on the table beside him.