He reached Olivier's landing. A knotted piece of string was his bell-pull. Christophe tugged at it so mightily that at the noise several doors on the staircase were half opened. Olivier came to the door. Christophe was struck by the careful simplicity of his dress: and the neatness of it, which at any other time would have been little to his liking, was in that place an agreeable surprise: in such an atmosphere of foulness there was something charming and healthy about it. And at once he felt just as he had done the night before when he gazed into Olivier's clear, honest eyes. He held out his hand: but Olivier was overcome with shyness, and murmured: "You.... You here!" Christophe was engrossed in catching at the lovable quality of the man as it was revealed to him in that fleeting moment of embarrassment, and he only smiled in answer. He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and entered the one room in which he both slept and worked. An iron bedstead stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows heaped up on the bolster. There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all. The room was cramped, low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that shone in the eyes of its owner. Everything was clean and tidy, as though a woman's hands had dealt with it: and a few roses in a vase brought spring-time into the room, the walls of which were decorated with photographs of old Florentine pictures. "So.... You.... You have come to see me?" said Olivier warmly. "Good Lord, I had to!" said Christophe. "You would never have come to me?" "You think not?" replied Olivier. Then, quickly: "Yes, you are right. But it would not be for want of thinking of it." "What would have stopped you?" "Wanting to too much." "That's a fine reason!" "Yes. Don't laugh. I was afraid you would not want it as much as I." "A lot that's worried me! I wanted to see you, and here I am. If it bores you, I shall know at once." "You will have to have good eyes." They smiled at each other. Olivier went on: "I was an ass last night. I was afraid I might have offended you. My shyness is absolutely a disease: I can't get a word out." "I shouldn't worry about that. There are plenty of talkers in your country: one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though it be only from shyness and in spite of himself." Christophe laughed and chuckled over his own gibe. "Then you have come to see me because I can be silent?" "Yes. For your silence, the sort of silence that is yours. There are all sorts: and I like yours, and that's all there is to say." "But how could you sympathize with me? You hardly saw me." "That's my affair. It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. When I see a face that I like in the crowd, I know what to do: I go after it; I simply have to know the owner of it." "And don't you ever make mistakes when you go after them?" "Often."