sea towards Alexandria. Gladly he saw the Riviera fade below the
horizon, with its hard bright sunshine, treacherous winds, and its smear
of rich, conventional English. All restlessness now had left him. True
vagabond still at forty, he only felt the unrest and discomfort of life
when caught in the network of routine and rigid streets, no chance of
breaking loose. He was off again at last, money scarce enough indeed,
but the joy of wandering expressing itself in happy emotions of release.
Every warning of calculation was stifled. He thought of the American
woman who walked out of her Long Island house one summer's day to look
at a passing sail--and was gone eight years before she walked in again.
Eight years of roving travel! He had always felt respect and admiration
for that woman.

For Felix Henriot, with his admixture of foreign blood, was philosopher
as well as vagabond, a strong poetic and religious strain sometimes
breaking out through fissures in his complex nature. He had seen much
life; had read many books. The passionate desire of youth to solve the
world's big riddles had given place to a resignation filled to the brim
with wonder. Anything _might_ be true. Nothing surprised him. The most
outlandish beliefs, for all he knew, might fringe truth somewhere. He
had escaped that cheap cynicism with which disappointed men soothe their
vanity when they realise that an intelligible explanation of the
universe lies beyond their powers. He no longer expected final answers.

For him, even the smallest journeys held the spice of some adventure;
all minutes were loaded with enticing potentialities. And they shaped
for themselves somehow a dramatic form. "It's like a story," his friends
said when he told his travels. It always was a story.

But the adventure that lay waiting for him where the silent streets of