‘Just so,’ I soothed Diaz, and we drove off.

I have never been happier than in unhappiness.  Happiness is not joy, and it is not tranquillity.  It is something deeper and something more disturbing.  Perhaps it is an acute sense of life, a realization of one’s secret being, a continual renewal of the mysterious savour of existence.  As I crossed Paris with the drunken Diaz leaning clumsily against my shoulder, I was profoundly unhappy.  I was desolated by the sight of this ruin, and yet I was happier than I had been since Frank died.  I had glimpses and intimations of the baffling essence of our human lives here, strange, fleeting comprehensions of the eternal wonder and the eternal beauty....  In vain, professional writer as I am, do I try to express myself.  What I want to say cannot be said; but those who have truly lived will understand.

We passed over the Seine, lighted and asleep in the exquisite Parisian night, and the rattling of the cab on the cobble-stones roused Diaz from his stupor.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Just going through the Louvre,’ I replied.

‘I don’t know how I got to the other s-side of the river,’ he said.  ’Don’t remember.  So you’re coming home with me, eh?  You aren’t ‘shamed of me?’

‘You are hurting me,’ I said coldly, ‘with your elbow.’

‘Oh, a thousand pardons! a thous’ parnds, Magda!  That isn’t your real name, is it?’

He sat upright and turned his face to glance at mine with a fatuous smile; but I would not look at him.  I kept my eyes straight in front.  Then a swerve of the carriage swung his body away from me, and he subsided into the corner.  The intoxication was gaining on him every minute.

‘What shall I do with him?’ I thought.

I blushed as we drove up the Avenue de l’Opera and across the Grand Boulevard, for it seemed to me that all the gay loungers must observe Diaz’ condition.  We followed darker thoroughfares, and at last the cab, after climbing a hill, stopped before a house in a street that appeared rather untidy and irregular.  I got out first, and Diaz stumbled after me, while two women on the opposite side of the road stayed curiously to watch us.  Hastily I opened my purse and gave the driver a five-franc-piece, and he departed before Diaz could decide what to say.  I had told him to go.

I did not wish to tell the driver to go.  I told him in spite of myself.

Diaz, grumbling inarticulately, pulled the bell of the great door of the house.  But he had to ring several times before finally the door opened; and each second was a year for me, waiting there with him in the street.  And when the door opened he was leaning against it, and so pitched forward into the gloom of the archway.  A laugh—­the loud, unrestrained laugh of the courtesan—­came from across the street.

The archway was as black as night.

‘Shut the door, will you?’ I heard Diaz’ voice.  ’I can’t see it.  Where are you?’