"HAVEN'T you ever played tricks on those you love," thought Lewis, answering an imaginary antagonist, as he walked along the quais by himself. The night, deep as coffee grounds in which he could foretell no future, was over. He had spent it with Madame Magnac, as in the old days. Now he was on his way back to Irene for breakfast. What he liked about Irene was her purity; he had adored that purity for so long that he could not bear it any more. Indeed it protected Irene, unfairly he thought, from everything; it protected her from suspicion, from danger; it enabled her to remain herself; never to make an effort to serve him or to understand him; she went to bed completely enveloped in this carapace.... To go on living in Paris after the age of thirty one must accept being surrounded by complicity. Otherwise one must leave. Since Irene had agreed to come back to France, she must sooner or later get used to it. Lewis used to think that the peccadillos which seemed to him necessary with women who only attracted him physically, would automatically cease if he ever really fell in love. He had counted without that eagerness to surpass ourselves which dominates us and which is perhaps nothing but habit disguised. No, he was not complicating his life, he was simplifying it. XV HE was simplifying it more than he imagined, for when he got home he found the house empty. He waited for two days. Then seized with a remorse and despair of which he would not have been thought capable, in forty-two hours he scoured Paris, London and Trieste. But without result. There was not the slightest trace of Irene. On the eighth day he received a telegram from her asking him to come and join her at Corfu. Would she forgive him? No pilgrimage would have been too long for him if she would relieve him of his misery. With some difficulty, the relations between Italy and Greece still being strained, he obtained a permit, and after further efforts he succeeded in getting on board an Italian vessel at Brindisi, laden with troops. The next day at sundown Corfu appeared, set in the swelling sea. In the leaden channel they dipped their ensign to _Count Cavour_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Saint Mark_, _Leopardi_ and all kinds of Italian celebrities painted iron-grey, armed with naked guns trained on the old citadel protected by its interlacing vines. The principal buildings sought shelter under the white flag. The whole town was peacefully doing its laundry. The Italians had just declared a blockade against the island. At the Hôtel de la Belle Venise, Lewis heard that the Greek ships with their passengers were confined to the south, in the Khalkiopoulo Bay. He went there at sunset.