During the journey I thought over my errand with misgiving.

She was very unhappy, but to excite my sympathy she was able to make a show of her unhappiness.

Now that I was free from the spectacle of Mrs. Strickland's distress I could consider the matter more calmly.

I was puzzled by the contradictions that I saw in her behaviour.

It was evident that she had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a sufficiency of handkerchiefs;

I admired her forethought, but in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving.

I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.

But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my spirits rose as I approached Paris.

I could not decide whether she desired the return of her husband because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature;

I shook my head.

We looked it out in the directory.

I enquired at my hotel for that in which Charles Strickland was living. It was called the Hotel des Belges.

The quarter was not fashionable; it was not even respectable.

But the concierge, somewhat to my surprise, had never heard of it.

The only hotel of that name was in the Rue des Moines.

There was no other hotel of that name in Paris.

I made up my mind to see Strickland the following evening, for I felt instinctively that the hour must be chosen with delicacy. An appeal to the emotions is little likely to be effectual before luncheon.

My own thoughts were then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine connubial bliss till after tea.

"I'm sure that's not it," I said.

I had understood from Mrs. Strickland that it was a large and sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de Rivoli.

I saw myself, too, from the dramatic standpoint, and I was pleased with my role of the trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his forgiving wife.

The concierge shrugged his shoulders.

It occurred to me that Strickland had concealed his address, after all.

My own hotel was modest enough, but it was magnificent in comparison with this.

It was a tall, shabby building, that cannot have been painted for years, and it had so bedraggled an air that the houses on each side of it looked neat and clean.

In giving his partner the one I knew he was perhaps playing a trick on him.

The dirty windows were all shut.

Next day about six o'clock I took a cab to the Rue des Moines, but dismissed it at the corner, since I preferred to walk to the hotel and look at it before I went in. It was a street of small shops subservient to the needs of poor people, and about the middle of it, on the left as I walked down, was the Hotel des Belges.

I do not know why I had an inkling that it would appeal to Strickland's sense of humour to bring a furious stockbroker over to Paris on a fool's errand to an ill-famed house in a mean street.

Still, I thought I had better go and see.

It was not here that Charles Strickland lived in guilty splendour with the unknown charmer for whose sake he had abandoned honour and duty.

"He hasn't left his key. Go up and you'll see."

I rang, and presently a waiter appeared. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen look. He was in shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers.

I do not know why I made my enquiry as casual as possible.

There was a bench outside, on which it might be presumed the night porter passed uneasy nights. There was no one about, but under an electric bell was written Garcon.

I walked up narrow stairs, and on the landing found a sort of box, glassed in, within which were a desk and a couple of chairs.

"Does Mr. Strickland live here by any chance?" I asked.

The door was at the side of a shop. It stood open, and just within was a sign: Bureau au premier.

I went in only to be able to tell Mrs. Strickland that I had done my best.

"Number thirty-two. On the sixth floor."

The waiter looked at a board in the bureau.

I was so surprised that for a moment I did not answer.

I was vexed, for I felt that I had been made a fool of, and I nearly turned away without making an enquiry.

"Is he in?"

At length I reached the sixth floor, and knocked at the door numbered thirty-two.

He uttered not a word. He evidently did not know me.

There was a large wooden bedstead on which was a billowing red eiderdown, and there was a large wardrobe, a round table, a very small washstand, and two stuffed chairs covered with red rep.

"Madame est la?"

There was a sound within, and the door was partly opened. Charles Strickland stood before me.

I told him my name. I tried my best to assume an airy manner.

"Monsieur est seul."

They were dark and airless. There was a foul and musty smell.

Three flights up a Woman in a dressing-gown, with touzled hair, opened a door and looked at me silently as I passed.

The waiter looked at me suspiciously as I made my way upstairs.

"Come in," he said cheerily. "I'm delighted to see you. Take a pew."

"You don't remember me. I had the pleasure of dining with you last July."

I entered. It was a very small room, overcrowded with furniture of the style which the French know as Louis Philippe.

I thought it as well to put one more question.

"Certainly. Are you alone?"

"I've come to see you on behalf of your wife."

Strickland threw on the floor the clothes that burdened one of the chairs, and I sat down on it.

In that small room he seemed even bigger than I remembered him.

There was no sign of the abandoned luxury that Colonel MacAndrew had so confidently described.

He put on a bowler hat much in need of brushing.

"I can drink it."

"I was just going out to have a drink before dinner. You'd better come too. Do you like absinthe?"

He wore an old Norfolk jacket, and he had not shaved for several days.

"Oh yes. In point of fact I've not spoken to a soul for three days. My French isn't exactly brilliant."

"We might dine together. You owe me a dinner, you know."

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

I did not know how he would take the remark I had prepared.

When last I saw him he was spruce enough, but he looked ill at ease: now, untidy and ill-kempt, he looked perfectly at home.

"Come on, then."

I flattered myself that I had got in that important question very naturally.

Everything was dirty and shabby.

I wondered as I preceded him downstairs what had happened to the little lady in the tea shop.

Had they quarrelled already, or was his infatuation passed?

It seemed hardly likely if, as appeared, he had been taking steps for a year to make his desperate plunge.

We walked to the Avenue de Clichy, and sat down at one of the tables on the pavement of a large cafe.