She swung around the corner near the Pantheon and rapidly approached the door of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve.  A thin, draggled, middle-aged woman-student, entering hastily, slipped on the wet stones and knocked from under his arm the leather portfolio of a thin, draggled, middle-aged man who was just coming out.  The woman did not stop to help repair the damage she had done, but hastened desperately on into the shelter of the building.  Sylvia’s eyes, absent as they were, were caught and held by the strange, blank look of the man, who stood motionless, his shabby hat knocked to one side of his thin, gray hair, his curiously filmed eyes fixed stupidly on the litter of papers scattered at his feet.  The rain was beginning to convert them into sodden pulp, but he did not stir.  The idea occurred to Sylvia that he might be ill, and she advanced to help him.  As he saw her stoop to pick them up, he said in French, in a toneless voice, very indifferently:  “Don’t give yourself the trouble.  They are of no value.  I carry them only to make the Library attendants think I am a bona-fide reader.  I go there to sleep because I have no other roof.”

His French was entirely fluent, but the accent was American.  Sylvia looked up at him surprised.  He returned her gaze dully, and without another look at the papers, scuffled off through the rain, across the street towards the Pantheon.  His boots were lamentable.

Sylvia had an instantly vanishing memory of a pool of quiet sunshine, of a ripely beautiful woman and a radiant young man.  Before she knew she was speaking, an impulsive cry had burst from her:  “Why, Professor Saunders!  Professor Saunders!  Don’t you know me?  I am Sylvia Marshall!”

CHAPTER XXXIX

SYLVIA DRIFTS WITH THE MAJORITY

“No, they don’t let you sit down in here if you’re as shabby as I am,” said the man, continuing his slow, feeble, shuffling progress.  “They know you’re only a vagrant, here to get out of the rain.  They won’t even let you stand still long.”

Sylvia had not been inside the Pantheon before, had never been inside a building with so great a dome.  They stood under it now.  She sent her glance up to its vast, dim, noble heights and brought it down to the saturnine, unsavory wreck at her side.  She was regretting the impulse which had made her call out to him.  What could she say to him now they were together?  What word, what breath could be gentle enough, light enough not to be poison to that open sore?

On his part he seemed entirely unconcerned about the impression he made on her.  His eyes, his sick, filmed eyes, looked at her with no shrinking, with no bravado, with an entire indifference which gave, through all the desolation of his appearance, the strangest, careless dignity to the man.  He did not care what she thought of him.  He did not care what any one thought of him.  He gave the impression of a man whose accounts are all reckoned and the balance struck, long ago.