Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite attitude when particularly certain of his point.

“Well,” he replied, “it ’s always permissible to think well of your own country.  But, frankly, I’ve come out of those places here with little strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why.”  His lips lost their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the result of his experience.  “You spend your money freely, you have fine buildings, self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of hospitality.  The reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy.  You invite us—­and when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers, criminals, beneath contempt—­as if we had inflicted a personal injury on you; and when we get out again, we are naturally degraded.”

Shelton bit his lips.

“How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?” he asked.

The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how far the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no money in their pockets.  He took the note that Shelton proffered him.

“A thousand thanks,” said he; “I shall never forget what you have done for me”; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true emotion behind his titter of farewell.

He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again; then looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of things that had accumulated somehow—­the photographs of countless friends, the old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes.  Into him restlessness had passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner’s damp hand.  To wait about in London was unbearable.

He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the river.  It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers before it.  During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank Street.  “I wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting on!” he thought.  On a fine day he would probably have passed by on the other side; he now entered and tapped upon the wicket.

No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry.  Yes, Carolan was always in; you could never catch him out—­seemed afraid to go into the street!  To her call the little Frenchman made his appearance as punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer.  His face was as yellow as a guinea.

“Ah! it’s you, monsieur!” he said.

“Yes,” said Shelton; “and how are you?”

“It ’s five days since I came out of hospital,” muttered the little Frenchman, tapping on his chest; “a crisis of this bad atmosphere.  I live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South.  If there’s anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me pleasure.”

“Nothing,” replied Shelton, “I was just passing, and thought I should like to hear how you were getting on.”