He wandered up and down the Boul’ Mich’ obsessed by his ideas, and the clocks in the cafés were pointing to five minutes of eleven when he turned from the Avenue du Maine into the little street, closed at one end, which bears the name of the adjacent avenue. Invern had never been before in this Impasse du Maine, though he had passed it daily for ten years. He remembered it as a place where painters and sculptors resided; it was dark, and the buildings for the most part were dingy, yet his impression, as he slowly moved along the lower side of the street, was not a depressing one. He reached the number given him as the bells in the neighboring church began to sound the hour. He had not time to summon the concierge when a hand was laid upon his arm; a woman, wearing a hood, and enveloped in a long cloak, peered at him through a heavy veil. He knew that it was June Tilney and his heart began to pump up the blood into his temples. She stooped as if endeavoring to hide her identity, and in her hand she carried a little cane. “Don’t go in!” she adjured the young man who, astounded by this apparition, regarded her with open-mouthed disquiet. “Don’t go in--there!” she again admonished him. “It means peril to your immortal soul if you do. I caution you for the _second_ time.” “But how can it harm me?” “I have warned you,” she answered abruptly--was this his June Tilney of the bright morning airs?--“and I repeat: it is my wish that you do not visit there to-night.” Something in her tone aroused opposition. “Nevertheless, Miss Tilney, I mean to see the Devil to-night.” “Then go see her! But deny her if you dare!” She vanished in a doorway across the street.... Shocked as was Oswald, he stolidly pulled the bell until the massive doors opened. A light at the end of a large, dim court showed him the staircase of the atelier. A moment later he had let fall a grinning bronze knocker in the image of a faun’s hoof, and he had hardly time to ask himself the mystery of Miss Tilney’s request, when he was welcomed by Count Van Zorn.