my first plan when i went abroad was to change my harbury french, which was poor stuff and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then go into germany to do the same thing with my german, and then perhaps to remain in germany studying german social conditions—and the quality of the german army. it seemed to me that when the term of my exile was over i might return to england and re-enter the army. but all these were very anæmic plans conceived by a tired mind, and i set about carrying them out in a mood of slack lassitude. i got to paris, and in paris i threw them all overboard and went to switzerland.

i remember very clearly how i reached paris. i arrived about sunset—i suppose at st. lazare or the gare du nord—sent my luggage to the little hotel in the rue d'antin where i had taken rooms, and dreading their loneliness decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. i remember walking out into the streets just as shops and windows and street lamps were beginning to light up, and strolling circuitously through the clear bright stir of the parisian streets to find a dinner at the café de la paix. some day you will know that peculiar sharp definite excitement of paris. all cities are exciting, and each i think in a different way. and as i walked down along some boulevard towards the centre of things i saw a woman coming along a side street towards me, a woman with something in her body and something in her carriage that reminded me acutely of mary. her face was downcast, and then as we converged she looked up at me, not with the meretricious smile of her class but with a steadfast, friendly look. her face seemed to me sane and strong. i passed and hesitated. an extraordinary impulse took me. i turned back. i followed this woman across the road and a little way along the opposite pavement. i remember i did that, but i do not remember clearly what was in my mind at the time; i think it was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship in her eyes. there i had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from my desolation. then came amazement and reaction. i turned about and went on my way, and saw her no more.

but afterwards, later, i went out into the streets of paris bent upon finding that woman. she had become a hope, a desire.

i looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps or two hours. i went along, peering at the women's faces, through the blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickering reflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-moving adventurous human beings. i crossed streams of traffic, paused at luminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon me from above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... my first intentness upon one person, so that i disregarded any distracting intervention, gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of the things about me. that original woman became as it were diffused. i began to look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind the panes of the cafés, and even on the terraces—for the weather was still dry and open. i scrutinized the faces i passed, faces for the most part animated by a sort of shallow eagerness. many were ugly, many vile with an intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almost gracious. there was something pathetic and appealing for me in this great sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weak community of desire for joy and eventfulness. there came to me a sense of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. from an outer darkness of unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither—as i had come.

i was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters out of which long since it came, into the light and air. it was as if old forgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral memories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for life about me....

then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear poured over me. this vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... i hailed a passing fiacre, went straight to my little hotel, settled my account with the proprietor, and caught a night train for switzerland.

all night long my head ached, and i lay awake swaying and jolting and listening to the rhythms of the wheels, paris clean forgotten so soon as it was left, and my thoughts circling continually about justin and philip and mary and the things i might have said and done.