THE SUPREME ILLUSION




I


Perhaps it was because I was in a state of excited annoyance that I did
not recognize him until he came right across the large hall of the hotel
and put his hand on my shoulder.

I had arrived in Paris that afternoon, and driven to that nice,
reasonable little hotel which we all know, and whose name we all give in
confidence to all our friends; and there was no room in that hotel. Nor
in seven other haughtily-managed hotels that I visited! A kind of
archduke, who guarded the last of the seven against possible customers,
deigned to inform me that the season was at its fullest, half London
being as usual in Paris, and that the only central hotels where I had a
chance of reception were those monstrosities the Grand and the Hôtel
Terminus at the Gare St Lazare. I chose the latter, and was accorded
room 973 in the roof.

I thought my exasperations were over. But no! A magnificent porter
within the gate had just consented to get my luggage off the cab, and
was in the act of beginning to do so, when a savagely-dressed, ugly and
ageing woman, followed by a maid, rushed neurotically down the steps and