Then he rose slowly to
his feet and walked out of the hotel--moving with a peculiar precision like
one who walks in a trance. After that he lost count of time. He went down
into the depths and the dark waters of a grief and agony that was nigh to
madness submerged him.
When he came to himself it was to find that it was late afternoon and that
he was back again in his room at the hotel. He could not have given the
faintest account of how he had passed the hours which had intervened since
he had walked out of the hotel into the moonlit night--whether he had eaten
or drunken or where he had been. He had a vague recollection of wandering
aimlessly about the streets, and then of diverging from the town into the
country because he had twice encountered the same _gendarme_ and on the
second occasion the man had followed him for a few yards suspiciously.
Beyond that he remembered nothing. He was only conscious of a physical
fatigue so intense, so racking in every nerve and sinew and fibre of his
body that for the time being it deadened even the mental torture he had
been enduring. He flung himself down on his bed and slept till the noonday
sun was high in the heavens, flooding his room with light.
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