fro, skimming always over the real life of nations, and never penetrating into it.  There was no place for them, because they had made none.  With the exception of Chirac, whom an accident of business had thrown, into Gerald’s company years before, they had no social relations.  Gerald was not a man to make friends; he did not seem to need friends, or at any rate to feel the want of them.  But, as chance had given him Chirac, he maintained the connection whenever they came to Paris.  Sophia, of course, had not been able to escape from the solitude imposed by existence in hotels.  Since her marriage she had never spoken to a woman in the way of intimacy.  But once or twice she had approached intimacy with Chirac, whose wistful admiration for her always aroused into activity her desire to charm.

Preceded by the menial, he came into the room hurriedly, apologetically, with an air of acute anxiety.  And as he saw her lying on her back, with flushed features, her hair disarranged, and only the grace of the silk ribbons of her matinee to mitigate the melancholy repulsiveness of her surroundings, that anxiety seemed to deepen.

“Dear madame,” he stammered, “all my excuses!” He hastened to the bedside and kissed her hand—­a little peek according to his custom.  “You are ill?”

“I have my migraine,” she said.  “You want Gerald?”

“Yes,” he said diffidently.  “He had promised——­”

“He has left me,” Sophia interrupted him in her weak and fatigued voice.  She closed her eyes as she uttered the words.

“Left you?” He glanced round to be sure that the waiter had retired.

“Quitted me!  Abandoned me!  Last night!”

“Not possible!” he breathed.

She nodded.  She felt intimate with him.  Like all secretive persons, she could be suddenly expansive at times.

“It is serious?” he questioned.

“All that is most serious,” she replied.

“And you ill!  Ah, the wretch!  Ah, the wretch!  That, for example!” He waved his hat about.

“What is it you want, Chirac?” she demanded, in a confidential tone.

“Eh, well,” said Chirac.  “You do not know where he has gone?”

“No.  What do you want?” she insisted.

He was nervous.  He fidgetted.  She guessed that, though warm with sympathy for her plight, he was preoccupied by interests and apprehensions of his own.  He did not refuse her request temporarily to leave the astonishing matter of her situation in order to discuss the matter of his visit.

“Eh, well!  He came to me yesterday afternoon in the Rue Croissant to borrow some money.”

She understood then the object of Gerald’s stroll on the previous afternoon.

“I hope you didn’t lend him any,” she said.