Instead of investigating, however,—­his nerves must have been too overwrought for that, he said,—­he shrank back as closely as possible against the wall on the other side.  The thing, whatever it was, slipped past him with a sound of rustling and, retreating with light footsteps down the passage behind him, was gone.  A breath of warm, scented air was wafted to his nostrils.

Vezin caught his breath for an instant and paused, stockstill, half leaning against the wall—­and then almost ran down the remaining distance and entered his room with a rush, locking the door hurriedly behind him.  Yet it was not fear that made him run:  it was excitement, pleasurable excitement.  His nerves were tingling, and a delicious glow made itself felt all over his body.  In a flash it came to him that this was just what he had felt twenty-five years ago as a boy when he was in love for the first time.  Warm currents of life ran all over him and mounted to his brain in a whirl of soft delight.  His mood was suddenly become tender, melting, loving.

The room was quite dark, and he collapsed upon the sofa by the window, wondering what had happened to him and what it all meant.  But the only thing he understood clearly in that instant was that something in him had swiftly, magically changed:  he no longer wished to leave, or to argue with himself about leaving.  The encounter in the passage-way had changed all that.  The strange perfume of it still hung about him, bemusing his heart and mind.  For he knew that it was a girl who had passed him, a girl’s face that his fingers had brushed in the darkness, and he felt in some extraordinary way as though he had been actually kissed by her, kissed full upon the lips.

Trembling, he sat upon the sofa by the window and struggled to collect his thoughts.  He was utterly unable to understand how the mere passing of a girl in the darkness of a narrow passage-way could communicate so electric a thrill to his whole being that he still shook with the sweetness of it.  Yet, there it was!  And he found it as useless to deny as to attempt analysis.  Some ancient fire had entered his veins, and now ran coursing through his blood; and that he was forty-five instead of twenty did not matter one little jot.  Out of all the inner turmoil and confusion emerged the one salient fact that the mere atmosphere, the merest casual touch, of this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness, had been sufficient to stir dormant fires in the centre of his heart, and rouse his whole being from a state of feeble sluggishness to one of tearing and tumultuous excitement.

After a time, however, the number of Vezin’s years began to assert their cumulative power; he grew calmer, and when a knock came at length upon his door and he heard the waiter’s voice suggesting that dinner was nearly over, he pulled himself together and slowly made his way downstairs into the dining-room.

Every one looked up as he entered, for he was very late, but he took his customary seat in the far corner and began to eat.  The trepidation was still in his nerves, but the fact that he had passed through the courtyard and hall without catching sight of a petticoat served to calm him a little.  He ate so fast that he had almost caught up with the current stage of the table d’hote, when a slight commotion in the room drew his attention.