There were three hotels in Carcassonne, one in the upper Cité, very grand and quaint, and with the grandest, quaintest prices too, and two in the lower town across the river Aude. Cynthia had taken a room at the station hotel, which was the first one she saw when she got off the train. It was at least cheap and convenient. Oh yes, and there was the Hotel de l’Universe, hardly worthy of the name of a hotel but displaying its grandiloquent appellation in gilt letters two feet high across its entire three room frontage. Cynthia had smiled at the name, for she had found in France that it was generally the smallest places that bore the biggest names. The Universe looked cozy and very clean, and she had even thought of moving her suitcase inside its hospitable blue door, but had been too busy to carry out the thought. Often however she dined there and tonight as she crossed the square and passed the little red checked gingham curtains and the green painted iron tables on the terrace, she saw the American boy having a beer on the terrace, just as she had seen him every evening since she came. She smiled and waved a hand at him, and he very nearly smiled in return. Cynthia had an impulse to try once more to talk to him, as she had tried on the train, but immediately his gaze had returned morosely to the long lane of dusty plane trees that lined the street. Oh well, she wasn’t going to waste her time picking up someone who evidently didn’t want to be picked up. But when you travel for miles and miles, and hours and hours in the same railway coach with a chap, and you know he’s a fellow countryman, and hard up probably, like you are ... just look at the clothes he wore; neat, but not any product of Park Avenue, and when there’s scarcely another American in the Lower Town, not at least until today, why it would seem sort of pleasant to meet once or twice and have a talk. Cynthia gave a little skip of pleasure and forgot the boy on the terrace. Nice to have a dinner date, nice to be going to talk good old United States for an evening. Adventure was exciting ... afterwards, but it was pretty dull sometimes while it was happening. But when she returned along the narrow little street, past the Hotel de l’Universe, with the last rays of the sun gilding the far off towers of the upper city, the boy was still sitting on the terrace. Cynthia wondered. She had first seen him at Toulouse, standing on the platform with his suitcase in his hand and Cynthia, leaning out of the window to buy a _sandwich jambon_ and a bottle of mineral water from the little pushcart, like a giant baby carriage, that peddles lunches on all the train platforms in France, noticed his very American shoes. She always played little games with herself to ward off boredom, and by this time considered herself quite skillful in telling even Norwegians from English, who looked so much like them.