Dan was in his room at the hotel. He woke and then slept again. Nothing seemed strange to him—nothing seemed real. It was three o’clock in the morning, the rumble of Paris was dull; it did not disturb him, for he seemed without the body and to have grown giantlike, and to fill the room. He had a sense of suffocation and the need to break through the windows and to escape into ether.

The entrance of Poniotowsky’s two friends was a part with the unreal naturalness. One was a Roumanian, the other a Frenchman—both spoke fluent English. Dan, his eyes fixed on the foreign faces, only half saw them; they blurred, their voices were small and far away. Finally he said:

“All right, all right, I can shoot well enough; this kind of thing isn’t our custom, you know—I’d as soon kill him one way as another, as a matter of fact. No, I don’t know a darned soul here.” There was a confab incomprehensible to Dan. “It’s all one to me, gentlemen,” he said. “I’d rather not drag in my friends, anyhow. Fix it up to suit yourselves.”

He wanted them to go—to be alone—to stretch his arms, to rid himself of the burden of sense, and be free. And after they had left, he remained in his window till dawn. It came soon, midsummer dawn, a singularly tender morning in his heart. His mind worked with great rapidity. He had made his will in the States. He wished he could have left everything to Letty Lane, but if, as Ruggles said, he was a pauper? Perhaps it wasn’t a lie after all. Dan had written and telegraphed Ruggles asking for the solemn truth, and also telling him where he was and asking the older man to come over. If Ruggles proved he was poor, why, some of his burden was gone. His money had been a burden, he knew it now. He might have no use for money the next day. What good could it do him in a fix like this? He was to meet Poniotowsky at five o’clock in a place whose name he couldn’t recall. He had seen it advertised, though; people went there for lunch.

They were to shoot at twenty-five paces—he might be a Rockefeller or a beggar for all the good his money could do him in a pinch like this.

His father wouldn’t approve, the old man wouldn’t approve, but he had sent him here to learn the ways of the old world. A flickering smile crossed his beautiful, set face. His lessons hadn’t done him much good; he would like to have seen good old Gordon Galorey again; he loved him—he had no use for Ruggles, no use—it had been all his fault. His mind reached out to his father, and the old man’s words came dinning back: “Buy the things that stay above ground, my boy.” What were those things? He had thought they were passion—he had thought they were love, and he had put all on one woman. She couldn’t stand by him, now that he was poor.

The spasm in his heart was so sharp that he made a low sound in his throat and leaned against the casing of the window. He must see her, touch her once more.

The fellows Poniotowsky’s seconds had chosen to be Dan’s representatives came in to “fix him up.” They were in frock-coats and carried their silk hats and their gloves. He could have laughed at them. Then they made him think of undertakers, and his blood grew cold. He handled the revolvers with care and interest.

“I’m not going to let him murder me, you know,” he told his seconds.

They helped him dress, at least one of them did, while the other took Dan’s place by the window and looked to the boy like a figure of death.

The hour was getting on; he heard his own motor drive up, and they went down, through the deserted hotel. The men who had consented to act for Dan regarded their principal curiously. He wasn’t pale, there was a brightness on his face.

“Partons,” said one of them, and told Blair’s chauffeur where to go and how to run. “Partons.”