The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist.  He moved softly, keeping to the shadows; but the streets were all deserted and very silent; the doors were closed, the shutters fastened.  Not a soul was astir.  The hush of night lay over everything; it was like a town of the dead, a churchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.

Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly disappeared to, he made his way to a back door that entered the inn by means of the stables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved.  He reached the courtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the shadow of the wall.  He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as the old men did when they entered the salle a manger.  He was horrified to find himself doing this instinctively.  A strange impulse came to him, catching him somehow in the centre of his body—­an impulse to drop upon all fours and run swiftly and silently.  He glanced upwards and the idea came to him to leap up upon his window-sill overhead instead of going round by the stairs.  This occurred to him as the easiest, and most natural way.  It was like the beginning of some horrible transformation of himself into something else.  He was fearfully strung up.

The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark along the side of the street where he moved.  He kept among the deepest of them, and reached the porch with the glass doors.

But here there was light; the inmates, unfortunately, were still about.  Hoping to slip across the hall unobserved and reach the stairs, he opened the door carefully and stole in.  Then he saw that the hall was not empty.  A large dark thing lay against the wall on his left.  At first he thought it must be household articles.  Then it moved, and he thought it was an immense cat, distorted in some way by the play of light and shadow.  Then it rose straight up before him and he saw that it was the proprietress.

What she had been doing in this position he could only venture a dreadful guess, but the moment she stood up and faced him he was aware of some terrible dignity clothing her about that instantly recalled the girl’s strange saying that she was a queen.  Huge and sinister she stood there under the little oil lamp; alone with him in the empty hall.  Awe stirred in his heart, and the roots of some ancient fear.  He felt that he must bow to her and make some kind of obeisance.  The impulse was fierce and irresistible, as of long habit.  He glanced quickly about him.  There was no one there.  Then he deliberately inclined his head toward her.  He bowed.

“Enfin!  M’sieur s’est donc decide.  C’est bien alors.  J’en suis contente.”

Her words came to him sonorously as through a great open space.

Then the great figure came suddenly across the flagged hall at him and seized his trembling hands.  Some overpowering force moved with her and caught him.

“On pourrait faire un p’tit tour ensemble, n’est-ce pas?  Nous y allons cette nuit et il faut s’exercer un peu d’avance pour cela.  Ilse, Ilse, viens donc ici.  Viens vite!”