"I must say good night," the stranger murmured, sadly. "I see that I must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it's rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the direction. There's one particular branch that always leads away from the point. I'm afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I might put up a notice to say, _this is the wrong way_; but supposing it were really the right way? It's a great responsibility to own such a crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why, by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn't perfectly clear I might upset the whole universe! We'll meet again one night at the Chouette. I think I'll cross the boulevard now. There's no traffic, and I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought." The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of diagonal tacks, disappeared. "Coco," said Sylvia. "Cocoa?" echoed Mrs. Gainsborough. "Brandy, more like." "Or hashish." "Ashes? Well, I had a fox-terrier once that died in convulsions from eating coke, so perhaps it is ashes." "We must meet him again," said Sylvia. "These queer people outside ordinary life interest me." "Well, it's interesting to visit a hospital," Mrs. Gainsborough agreed. "But that doesn't say you want to go twice. Once is enough for that fellow, to my thinking. He's interesting, but uncomfortable, like the top of a 'bus." Sylvia, however, was determined to pursue her acquaintance with the outcast Englishman. She soon discovered that for years he had been taking drugs and that nothing but drugs had brought him to his present state of abject buffoonery. Shortly before he became friends with Sylvia he had been taken up as a week's amusement by some young men who were under the impression that they were seeing Parisian life in his company. They had been generous to him, and latterly he had been able to drug himself as much as he wanted. The result had been to hasten his supreme collapse. Even in his last illness he would not talk to Sylvia about his youth before he came to Paris, and in the end she was inclined to accept him at his own estimate, a pose that was become a reality. One evening he seemed more haggard than usual and talked much less; by the twitching of his nostrils, he had been dosing himself hard with cocaine. Suddenly, he stretched his thin hand across the marble table and seized hers feverishly: "Tell me," he asked. "Are you sorry for me?" "I think it's an impertinence to be sorry for anybody," she answered. "But if you mean do I wish you well, why, yes, old son, I wish you very well."