THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
walking down one of the thoroughfares flanking the building. It was a quiet quarter, after all, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gave one an idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes as this were left to the few and the indifferent.
The day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and there by a yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little square into which they had turned. Dallas stopped again, and looked up.
"It must be here," he said, slipping his arm through his father's with a movement from which Archer's shyness did not shrink; and they stood together looking up at the house.
It was a modern building, without distinctive character, but many-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-coloured front. On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the rounded tops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were still lowered, as though the sun had just left it.
"I wonder which floor—?" Dallas conjectured; and moving toward the porte-cochère he put his head into the porter's lodge, and came back to say: "The fifth. It must be the one with the awnings."
Archer remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end of their pilgrimage had been attained.
"I say, you know, it's nearly six," his son at length reminded him.
The father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.
"I believe I'll sit there a moment," he said.
"Why—aren't you well?" his son exclaimed.
"Oh, perfectly. But I should like you, please, to go up without me."
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