He undressed and went to bed. It was some hours before he could sleep. But sleep came at last, and he woke in the morning refreshed physically, and feeling capable of facing the unknown future. As yet he had no definite plan. All he knew was that he must disappear. Merely leaving Olivia and setting up for himself elsewhere as Alexis Triona was not to be thought of. Alexis Triona and all that his name stood for—good and evil—must be blotted out of human ken. He must seek fortune again in a foreign country. Why not America? Writing under a fresh pseudonym, he could maintain himself with his pen. Bare livelihood was all that mattered. Even in this earthly Lake of Fire and Brimstone to which, as a liar, he had apocalyptically condemned himself, a man must live. During moments of his madness he had dallied with wild thoughts of suicide. His fundamental sanity had rejected them. He was no coward. Whatever punishment was in store for him, good God! he was man enough to face it. In his swift packing he had seized a clump of his headed note-paper. A sheet of this he took when, after breakfast, he had remounted to his frowzy room, and wrote a letter to his publishers informing them that he was suddenly summoned abroad, and instructing them to pay, till further notice, all sums accruing to him into Olivia’s banking account. Consulting his pass-book, he drew a cheque in Olivia’s favour, which he enclosed with a covering letter to Olivia’s bankers. Then, driving to his own bank, he cashed a cheque for the balance of some hundreds of pounds. With this, he prepared to start life in some new world. Restless, he drove back to his hotel. Restless still, he obeyed the instinct of his life, and began to wander; not about any such haunts as might be frequented by his acquaintances, but through the dingy purlieus of the vague region north of the line of Euston and King’s Cross Stations. * * * * * It was in a mean street in Somers Town, a hopeless, littered street of little despairing shops, and costers’ barrows, and tousled women and unclean children, that they met. They came up against each other face to face, and recoiled a step or two, each scanning the other in a puzzlement of recognition. Then Triona cried: “Yes, of course—you’re Boronowski.” “And you—the name escapes me—” the other tapped his forehead with a fat, pallid hand “—you’re the chauffeur-mechanic of Prince——” “Briggs,” said Triona. “Briggs—yes. The only man who knew more than I of Ukranian literature—I a Pole and you an Englishman. Ah, my friend, what has happened since those days?” “A hell of a lot,” said Triona. “You may indeed say so,” replied Boronowski. He smiled. “Well?” “Well?” said Triona. “What are you, well-dressed and looking prosperous, doing in this—” he waved a hand “—in this sordidity?” Triona responded with a smile—but at the foreign coinage of a word. “I’m just wandering about. And you?”