They finished breakfast and went down the four flights of stairs, Bert and Madeleine chatting gaily, Kendall following apprehensively, for they must pass the omniscient eye of the _concierge_. He was inclined to make an excuse to go back to the apartment so that he would not be compelled to take part in the scene he feared. Bert and Madeleine passed out of the big doors into the concrete-floored passageway that led to the street, and Kendall drew himself together as he saw the _concierge_ busily sweeping between them and the outer doors. She looked up and nodded and smiled. Madeleine stopped and they chatted! Actually chatted as if—why, as if there was no reason why they should not chat. And that _concierge_ was a gray-haired, motherly soul who in Detroit would have gone to foreign missionary meetings! Kendall could not follow the conversation, but he caught fragments of it. It was just casual chatter, with here and there a question dropped in to make for a better acquaintance. Then they bade each other good-by in the most friendly way imaginable and the trio went out to the street. Kendall was suspended in mid-air, feet off the ground, nothing solid within reach. He was in an element that was not his, in a universe where two solids could occupy the same place at the same time, or where the shortest distance between two points was a curve. All his rules and axioms were useless.... He began to realize that the years he had lived were more or less useless to him, and that if he wished to judge his present life and the people among whom he lived he must start at the beginning with an open mind. As an American he could never comprehend them; he could not think their thoughts nor understand their mental language. The part of him inherited from his mother could never get into _rapport_ with France; the part inherited from his father never could quite comprehend, though it might tolerate with a kindly toleration, and say: “Well, I don’t understand this way of doing things at all.... But maybe it’s all right—for the French.” He kept glancing at Madeleine. Every glance reassured him. She was a _nice_ girl. He liked her. There was nothing reprehensible about her, but, on the contrary, she was charming as he liked to see a girl charming, and modest, and _good_. He felt instinctively that she was good, just as he had felt that Andree was good.... Somewhere there must be an explanation. Somehow the thing was reconcilable.