I went to one of the rue de Rivoli hotels and met him by appointment. Of course, he hadn’t told me what it was about. Hoyting never writes; and he puts as little into a telegram as a frugal old maid. Any sign from Hoyting, however, would have sufficed to bring me to Paris; and I stayed in my hotel, never budging even for the Salon, so close at hand, until Hoyting appeared in my sitting-room. I asked Hoyting no questions. I hadn’t an idea of what he wanted. It might, given Hoyting, be anything. He began without preliminaries--except looking frightfully tired. That, for Hoyting, was a rather appalling preliminary. “Three months ago I was in Dakar. I don’t know just why I had drifted to Sénégal, except that I’ve come to feel that if there must be colonial governments they had better be French. If there was any special thing that pushed me, I’ve forgotten it. “They were decentish people, those French officers and their wives. A little stiff always, never expatriated, never quite at ease in their African inn, but not half so likely to go _fantee_ as the romantic Briton. And once a fortnight the little boats from Bordeaux would come in, bringing more of them. I rather liked them; but, even so, there wasn’t any particular reason for my staying so long in Dakar. I hung on like an alarm that has been set. I couldn’t go off--or on--until the moment I was set for. I don’t suppose the alarm-clock knows until the vibration begins within it. Something kept me there in that dull, glaring, little official town, with its dry dock and torpedo basin, which, of course, they had managed to endow with the flavor of provincial France. They do that everywhere--you’ll have noticed? “I used to go up sometimes in the comparative cool of the evening to dine with the Fathers. It isn’t that I hold with them much--Rome was introduced to me in my childhood as the Scarlet Woman--but all travellers have the same tale to tell. They are incomparable missionaries. And it stands to reason that they can get on better with savages than the rest of you. You can meet magic only with magic. It was they who introduced me to Paramore.” “Oh, it’s Paramore!” I exclaimed. “Heaven, forgive you, Hoyting, you are always in at the death. How do you manage it? But fancy being in at Paramore’s! By the way, I suppose you know that no one knows anything except that he’s dead.” “Umph! Well, I do,” returned Hoyting. “That’s what I was set for--like the clock: to turn up at the Mission House just when he was brought in there with fever. I don’t go hunting for things like that, you understand. I’d as soon have thought of staying on for Madame Pothier’s _beaux yeux_.” “I didn’t know you knew whether eyes were fine or not.”