He wandered down to the quay and back again in ever-growing depression. He felt lost, an alien among this humanity that clung together for mutual happiness; he envied the little soldier and his girl gazing hungrily, their heads almost touching, into a cheap jeweller’s window. A sudden craving such as he had never known in his life, awoke within him; insistent, imperious—a craving for human companionship. Instinctively he walked back to the hotel, scarcely realising why he had come; until he saw Clementina in the vestibule. She had stuck on her crazy hat and was pulling on her white cotton gloves; evidently preparing to go out. “Hullo! Back already?” “I have come to ask you a favour, Clementina,” said he. “Would it bore you to come out with me—to give me the pleasure of your company?” “It wouldn’t bore me,” replied Clementina. “Precious few things do. But what on earth can you want me for?” “If I tell you, you won’t mock at me?” “I only mock at you, as you call it, when you do idiotic things. Anyhow, I won’t now. What’s the matter?” He hesitated. She saw that her brusqueness had checked something natural and spontaneous. At once she strove to make amends, and laid her hand on his sleeve. “We’ve got to be friends henceforth, Ephraim; if only for the child’s sake. Tell me.” “It was only that I have never felt so dismally alone in my life, as I did in that crowded street.” “And so you came back for me?” “I came back for you,” he said with a smile. “Let us go,” said Clementina, and she put her arm through his and they went out together and walked arm in arm like hundreds of other solemn couples in Marseilles. “That better?” she asked after a while, with a humorous and pleasant sense of mothering this curiously pathetic and incomprehensible man. The unfamiliar tone in her voice touched him. “I had no idea you could be so kind, Clementina. Yesterday morning, when I was ill—I can scarcely remember—but I feel you were kind then.” “I’m not always a rhinoceros,” said Clementina. “But what am I doing that’s kind now?” He pressed her arm gently. “Just this,” said he. Then Clementina realised, with an odd thrill of pleasure, how much more significance often lies in little things than in big ones.