With the sound of a tank going into action the tram clattered forward to St Lunaire.
Up the steep street, and a swerve past the acres of tennis-courts that had once been grass. The huge six-acre cage was already full of players, and I thought of Jennie Aird. Then past the magasins and the long café, with half-clad young Frenchmen punting a ball and walking on their hands in the strip of meadow opposite. The Casino, the hotels, and then a steep planted avenue that seemed to end in the air. Then a rush and another swerve, and out on to the wide expanse of tussocky links, grey and fawn sandhills, and turf gemmed with a myriad tiny flowers.
His hotel was within a biscuit's-toss of the terminus. It stood by the roadside, and its front consisted of a built-out structure of glass, within which a couple of Breton girls with tight hair, string-soled shoes, and the physique of middle-weight boxers, were laying a dozen small tables for _déjeuner_. A lad dressed precisely as Derry had been dressed was delivering lifebuoys of bread, and knives clattered in baskets, and two-foot-high stacks of coloured plates were being carried in.
"M'sieu' Arnaud?" I inquired of one of the string-slippered Amazons.
"M'sieu' n'est pas déscendu--si vour voulez monter au deuxième, M'sieu'."
She indicated a way through the back salon that had once been the street frontage. Beyond yawned a cavernous kitchen, the blacker because of its opening on to a dazzlingly green back yard. Between the two rose a staircase, which a strapping youth was polishing with a mop on his foot. I mounted and gained the _deuxième_. Then, outside the closed door, I stopped with a thumping heart.
But it was no good hesitating. I pulled myself together and knocked.
His head was bent over his colour-box. On a piece of paper he appeared to be making a list of the colours to be replenished. He looked smilingly up, and our eyes met.
Clear eyes, grave sweet mouth, undoubting smile----
And unchanged. The night had passed, and nothing perceptible had happened. I crossed to the window. Now that all was well, I dare to admit to myself that I had been prepared to find him--dead. If he was right in fixing his climacteric at sixteen he might well have been dead.