Grimshaw was writing again—­in French—­and his work began to appear in the Parisian journals, a strange poetic prose impregnated with mysticism.  It was Grimshaw, sublimated.  I saw it myself, although at that time I had not heard Waram’s story.  The French critics saw it.  “This Pilleux is as picturesque as the English poet, Grimshaw.  The style is identical.”  Waram saw it.  He read everything that Pilleux wrote—­with eagerness, with terror.  Finally, driven by curiosity, he went to Paris, got Pilleux’s address from the editor of Gil Blas, and started for Africa.

Grimshaw is a misty figure at the last.  You see him faintly—­an exile, racially featureless, wearing a dirty white native robe, his face wrinkled by exposure to the sun, his eyes burning.  Marie says that he prowled about the village at night, whispering to himself, his head thrown back, pointing his beard at the stars.  He wrote in the cool hours before dawn, and later, when the village quivered in heat fumes and he slept, Marie posted what he had written to Paris.

One day he took her head between his hands and said very gently:  “Why don’t you get a lover?  Take life while you can.”

“You say there is eternal life,” she protested.

“N’en doutez-pas!  But you must be rich in knowledge.  Put flowers in your hair.  And place your palms against a lover’s palms and kiss him with generosity, ma petite.  I am not a man; I am a shadow.”

Marie slipped her arms around him and, standing on tiptoe, put her lips against his. “Je t’aime,” she said simply.

His eyes deepened.  There flashed into them the old, mad humour, the old vitality, the old passion for beauty.  The look faded, leaving his eyes “like flames that are quenched.”  Marie shivered, covered her face with her hands, and ran out.  “There was no blood in him,” she told me.  “He was like a spirit—­a ghost.  So meagre!  So wan!  Waxen hands.  Yellow flesh.  And those eyes, in which, monsieur, the flame was quenched!”

And this is the end of the curious story....  Waram went to Biskra and from there to the village where Grimshaw lived.  Grimshaw saw him in the street one evening and followed him to the hotel.  He lingered outside until Waram had registered at the bureau and had gone to his room.  Then he went in and sent word that “Pierre Pilleux was below and ready to see Doctor Waram.”

He waited in the “garden” at the back of the hotel.  No one was about.  A cat slept on the wall.  Overhead the arch of the sky was flooded with orange light.  Dust lay on the leaves of the potted plants and bushes.  It was breathless, hot, quiet.  He thought:  “Waram has come because Dagmar is dead.  Or the public has found me out!”