II

Early one day some two weeks after the foregoing incident the young
lawyer came out of his _pension francaise_, opposite his office, and
stood a moment in thought. In those two weeks he had not again seen
Mr. Castanado.

Once more it was scant half past eight. He looked across to the
windows of his office and of one bare third-story sleeping-room over
it. Eloquent windows! Their meanness reminded him anew how definitely
he had chosen not merely the simple but the solitary life. Yet now he
turned toward Royal Street. But at the third or fourth step he faced
about toward Chartres. The distance to the courthouse was the same
either way, and its entrances were alike on both streets.

Thought he as he went the Chartres Street way: "If I go _one more time_
by way of Royal I shall owe an abject apology, and yet to try to offer
it would only make the matter worse."

He went grimly, glad to pay this homage of avoidance which would have
been more to his credit paid a week or so earlier. His frequent
failure to pay it had won him, each time, a glimpse of _her_ and an
itching fear that prying eyes were on him inside other balconied
windows besides those of the unslender Mme. Castanado.

Temptation is a sly witch. Down at Conti Street, on the court-house's
upper riverside corner, he paused to take in the charm of one of the
most picturesque groups of old buildings in the _vieux carré_. But
there, to gather in all the effect, one must turn, sooner or later, and