And presently the little train came puffing in to Orléans, all of the people got out and streamed away towards the station along the platform. He took the girl’s basket and helped her down out of the train, and with the old bewildered indecision in his heart stood there looking after her as she walked away from him with a graceful, slow, and sensual stride in which every movement that she made seemed to imply reluctance to depart, an invitation to follow. And he looked after her numbly, with hot desire pounding slow and thick in pulse and blood. And he told himself, as he had told himself so many times before, that he would certainly find her again, knowing in his heart he never would.
Already the girl had been lost among the crowds of people streaming through the station, engulfed again in the everlasting web and weaving of this great earth, to leave him with a memory of another of those brief and final meetings, so poignant with their wordless ache of loss and of regret, in which, perhaps more than in the grander, longer meetings of our life, man’s bitter destiny of days, his fatal brevity, are apparent.
And again the boy found himself walking along the platform towards the station after the departing people, whom he had met so briefly and now lost for ever. Again he had sought the mysterious promises of a new land, new earth, and a shining city. Again he had come to a strange place, not knowing why he had come.
Why here?
XCII
The Grand Hôtel du Monde et d’Orléans, which was situated opposite the railway station on one of the corners of the station square, was, despite its sounding title, a modest establishment of forty or fifty rooms, constructed in that style at once grandiose and solid which is peculiar to French hotel architecture. When he entered he found two women seated in the bureau carrying on an animated conversation in fluent English, of which the startling substance ran somewhat as follows:
“But yes, madame. I assure you—you need have no—kalms?—kalms?”—the younger and larger of the two women said in a doubtful tone, lifting puzzled eyebrows at her older companion—“kalms, Comtesse, je ne comprends pas kalms. Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?”
“Mais non, cherie,” the other answered patiently. “Pas kalms—qualms—qualms.” She pronounced the word slowly and carefully several times, until the other woman succeeded in saying it after her, at which the little
