They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The eminent person mounted its steps; Charles accompanied him up the steps and inside. Probably the eminent person wished, by calling on some one there, to shake off Charles before going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken off Charles, who was of a tenacious habit. "Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles home to his bed, if it takes all night." He settled himself on the parapet of the Quai and watched the hotel entrance. He did not have to wait long. In some minutes Charles came out alone. He looked, thought Henry, observing him furtively from under his pulled down hat brim, a little less elated than he had appeared five minutes earlier. His self-esteem had suffered some blow, thought Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Mentality: that was the word one used about Charles, as if he had been a German during the late war (Germans having, as all readers of newspapers will remember, mentalities). Charles walked rapidly across the bridge, towards the road that led to his own châlet, a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his distance, hurried after him, through the steep, silent, sleeping city, up on to the dusty, tram-lined, residential road above it, till Charles stopped at a villa gate and let himself in. Then Henry turned back, and tramped drowsily down the dusty road beneath the moonless sky, and down through the steep, sleeping city, and across the Pont des Bergues, and so to the Quai du Seujet and the Allée Petit Chat, which lay dense and black and warm in shadow, and was full of miawling cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells. The drainage system of the St. Gervais quarter was crude. In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tenement, Henry undressed and sleepily tumbled into bed as the city clock struck two. In the dawn, below the miawling of lean cats and the yelping of dogs, he heard the lapping and shuffling of water, and thought of boats and beating oars. 19