Fleurissoire, with no eyes for Lafcadio’s portmanteau, was struggling with his new collar and had taken his coat off, so as to be able to put the stud in more easily; but the starched linen was as hard as cardboard and he struggled in vain. “He doesn’t look happy,” went on Lafcadio to himself. “He must be suffering from a fistula or some unpleasant complaint of that kind. Shall I go to his help? He’ll never manage it by himself....” Yes, though! At last the collar yielded to the stud. Fleurissoire then took up his tie, which he had placed on the seat beside his hat, his coat and his cuffs, and going up to the door of the carriage, looked at himself in the window-pane, endeavouring, like Narcissus in the water, to distinguish his reflection from the surrounding landscape. “He can’t see.” Lafcadio turned on the light. The train at that moment was running alongside a bank, which could be seen through the window, illuminated by the light cast upon it from one after another of the compartments of the train; a procession of brilliant squares was thus formed which danced along beside the railroad and suffered, each one in its turn, the same distortions, according to the irregularities of the ground. In the middle of one of these squares danced Fleurissoire’s grotesque shadow; the others were empty. “Who would see?” thought Lafcadio. “There--just to my hand--under my hand, this double fastening, which I can easily undo; the door would suddenly give way and he would topple out; the slightest push would do it; he would fall into the darkness like a stone; one wouldn’t even hear a scream.... And off to-morrow to the East!... Who would know?” The tie--a little ready-made sailor knot--was put on by now and Fleurissoire had taken up one of the cuffs and was arranging it upon his right wrist, examining, as he did so, the photograph above his seat, which represented some palace by the sea, and was one of four that adorned the compartment. “A crime without a motive,” went on Lafcadio, “what a puzzle for the police! As to that, however, going along beside this blessed bank, anybody in the next-door compartment might notice the door open and the old blighter’s shadow pitch out. The corridor curtains, at any rate, are drawn.... It’s not so much about events that I’m curious, as about myself. There’s many a man thinks he’s capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point.... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!... And no more right to take back one’s move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there’d be no interest in the game!... Between the imagination of a deed and.... Hullo! the bank’s come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think; a river....” The window-pane had now turned black and the reflections in it became more distinct. Fleurissoire leant forward to straighten his tie.