Giving her hand a last hug, he sprang up, and Bertha heard him next stormily descending the stairs, and then farther away passing rapidly down the avenue. Bertha was distinctly affected by this demonstration. It put a last brilliant light of grateful confusion on all the emotions emanating from Kreisler. The sort of notion he had evoked in parting that they had been doing something splendid together—a life-saving, a heroism—found a hospitable ground in her spirit. Taking everything together, things had been miraculously turned round. Her late blackness of depression and perplexity now merged in steadily growing relieved exaltation. CHAPTER XI Tarr had not gone to England. Kreisler had not been sufficient to accomplish this. He still persisted in his self-indulgent system of easy stages. A bus ride distant, he would be able to keep away. But in any case he did not wish to go to England, nor anywhere else, for that matter. Paris was much the most suitable domicile, independently of Bertha, with his present plans. In the neighbourhood of the Place Clichy, in an old convent, he found a room big enough for four people. There, on the day of the second of the letters, he arrived in a state of characteristic misgiving. It was the habitual indigestion of Reality. He was very fond of reality. But he was like a man very fond of what did not agree with him. It usually ended, however, by his assimilating it. The insouciant, adventurous, those needing no preparation to live, he did not admire, but felt he should imitate.—A new room was a thing that had to be fitted into as painfully as a foot into some new and too elegant boot. The things deposited on the floor, the door finally closed on this new area to be devoted exclusively to himself, the blankest discomfort descended on him. To undo and let loose upon the room his portmanteau’s squashed and dishevelled contents—like a flock of birds, brushes, photographs and books flying to their respective places on dressing-table, mantelpiece, shelf or bibliothèque; boxes and parcels creeping dog-like under beds and into corners, taxed his character to the breaking-point. The unwearied optimism of these inanimate objects, the way they occupied stolidly and quickly room after room, was appalling. Then they were _packed up_ things, with the staleness of a former room about them, and the souvenir of a depressing time of tearing up, inspecting, and interring.