“I will. I looked you up at your old address a month or so ago; they didn’t know where you’d gone.” Kreisler stared fixedly at him—a way of covering discomfiture felt at this news. The old address reminded him of several little debts there. For this reason he had not told them where he was going. The concierge would complain of her old tenant; probably, even, Lowndes might have been shown derelict tradesmen’s bills. Not much encouragement for his proposed victim! Lowndes was writing on a piece of paper. “There’s my address: Rue des Flammes.” Kreisler looked at it rather fussily and said over: “5 Rue des Flammes. Lowndes.” He hesitated and repeated the name. “R. W.—Robert Wooton. Here, I’ll write it down for you.” “Are you in a hurry? Come and have a drink at the Berne,” Kreisler suggested when he had made up his bill. On the way Lowndes continued a discourse. “A novelist I knew told me he changed the names of the characters in a book several times in the course of writing it. It freshened them up, according to him. He said that the majority of people were killed by their names. I think a name is a man’s soul.” Kreisler forged ahead, rhythmically and sullenly. “If we had numbers, for instance, instead of names, who would take the number thirteen?” Lowndes wondered in German. “I,” said Kreisler. “Would you?” Every minute Kreisler delayed increased the difficulty. His energy was giving out. They were now sitting on the _terrasse_ at the Berne. He had developed a particular antipathy to borrowing. An immense personal neurasthenia had grown up round this habit of his, owing to his late discomfitures. He already heard an awkward voice, saw awkward eyes. Then he suddenly concluded that the fact that Lowndes was not a German made it more difficult, instead of less so, as he had thought. Why could he not take?—why petition? He knew that if Lowndes refused he would break out; he nearly did so as it was. With disgust and fatigue he lay back in his chair, paying no attention to what Lowndes was saying. His mind was made up. He would not proceed with his designs on this dirty pocket. He became rough and monosyllabic. He wished to purify himself in rudeness of his preceding amiability. Lowndes had been looking at a newspaper. He put it down and said he must go back to “work.” His “morning” had, of course, been interrupted by Tarr! Kreisler still saw the expression on the Englishman’s face he had imagined, and restrained with difficulty the desire to spit in it. The nearness they had been to this demand must have affected, he thought, even his impervious companion. He _had_ asked and been refused, to all intents and purposes. He got up, left Lowndes standing there, and went into the lavatory at the side of the café, where he had a thorough wash in cold water. * * * * * Back at his table, he saw no sign of the Englishman, and sat down to finish his drink, considering what his next move should be.