His surprise was extreme. "You here! You don't mean to say you have
been waiting for me?"
I said negligently that I had been detained by unexpected business in the
neighbourhood, and thus happened to catch sight of him coming out.
He stared at me with solemn distraction, obviously thinking of something
else. I suggested that he had better take the next city-ward tramcar. He
was inattentive, and I perceived that he was profoundly perturbed. As
Miss de Barral (she had moved out of sight) could not possibly approach
the hotel door as long as we remained where we were I proposed that we
should wait for the car on the other side of the street. He obeyed
rather the slight touch on his arm than my words, and while we were
crossing the wide roadway in the midst of the lumbering wheeled traffic,
he exclaimed in his deep tone, "I don't know which of these two is more
mad than the other!"
"Really!" I said, pulling him forward from under the noses of two
enormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the way and
up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mind had
nothing to do with his movements.
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