Why heed the sensational events of the day? what mattered that a Minister had fallen? what did it matter that a scandal was washing dirty linen in the streets? Such things were dead and buried and forgot in nine days--but art and music and poetry remained, beauty was eternal. Why compete in the sordid money-grubbing race for wealth? We must all die. Why this strenuous hurrying to the open grave? So they reasoned. And they brought to their meeting no sign or word of their hard struggle for daily bread. They brought to their comradeship only laughter and wit and gentle faces and smiles.... The small hours of the night passed. It was nearing five o’clock, and the room began to thin of its frequenters. Noll called the waiter and paid the reckoning of saucers for himself and Hélène. She arose with him to go; and as they opened the doors and stepped out of the heavy air of the room, the grey dawn had broken and the dingy lamp of _The Golden Sun_ was paling into insignificance in the chill day. As they reached the river, they found, swathed in multitudinous wraps, a stout woman who was selling hot milk and rolls. Noll did not ask the girl, but ordered a couple of bowls of the comforting stuff and a roll. The girl drank the milk gladly; and of the roll she was very careful not to lose the crumbs. Noll took her to her poor room on the fifth story where was her threadbare home. At the threshold she asked him in. He smiled. He took her pathetic face between his two hands, and kissed her upon the wan cheek: “No, Hélène,” he said--“I love another woman.” She turned and went into her room. As he descended the stair she came out to him again: “Will you be at _The Golden Sun_ to-night?” she asked--her lips a little anxious and apart--beautiful lips. He hesitated--pondered--smiled: “Yes,” he said. As Noll crossed the Boule Miche a white mist hung over the river; at the far end of the students’ highway the heavens were chilly grey; all the stars were burnt out of the drab firmament. CHAPTER LXXV _Wherein our Hero goes out into the Night_ Noll slept till late into the afternoon, awoke heavy, and loafed aimlessly about his room, hoping to do some work before the dusk fell; but ideas were shy of him, and, as the afternoon wore on, he grew ever more restless. Flinging into an armchair, he opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer which tells of the Refuge from the brutalities of Life in Works of Art--in the contemplation of the Beautiful. And he steeped himself in the pessimistic writings until the light failed. At the coming of the darkness he roused, made himself some coffee, lit the lamp, and getting back to his easy-chair he pored over the gospel of Art for Art’s sake until midnight. At midnight he stretched, yawned, and, putting on his cloak and hat, turned out the light, and drifted to the streets again and so to the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.