table exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had never
moved--he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice in the
afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his journey
was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong in our
estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horribly right
was horribly clear from the look of him. But, "Don't be discouraged," I
falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that you--didn't leave enough time.
Two, three centuries hence, perhaps--"

"Yes," his voice came; "I've thought of that."

"And now--now for the more immediate future! Where are you
going to hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from
Charing Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don't go on to Paris. Stop at
Calais. Live in Calais. He'd never think of looking for you in Calais."

"It's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with an
ass." But I was not offended. "And a treacherous ass," he strangely
added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been
holding in his hand. I glanced at the writing on it--some sort of
gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

"Come, Soames, pull yourself together! This isn't a mere matter of
life or death. It's a question of eternal torment, mind you! You don't
mean to say you're going to wait limply here till the devil comes to fetch
you."

"I can't do anything else. I've no choice."

"Come! This is 'trusting and encouraging' with a vengeance! This