“What waltz is that?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening.  I had a fit of the blues, and didn’t go out.  What do you think of it?”

“I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?”

At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and a beautiful English girl entered.  Marshall introduced me.  With looks that see nothing, and words that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her sweetheart.  But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an appointment, that she was dining out.  She would, however, call in the morning, and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her.

I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but now Marshall’s society was an attraction I could not resist.  For the sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life.  On my arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d’Or by myself; but now I was taken to strange students’ cafes, where dinners were paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a table d’hote was held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great crowds to Bullier, the Chateau Rouge, or the Elysee Montmartre.  The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women, whose Christian names we only knew.  And then the returning in open carriages rolling through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer night, when the dusty darkness of the street is chequered by a passing glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a magic lantern out of the sky.

Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons were filled with febrile impressions.  Marshall had a friend in this street, and another in that.  It was only necessary for him to cry “Stop” to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs....

“Madame—­, est-elle chez elle?”

“Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d’entrer.” And we were shown into a handsomely furnished apartment.  A lady would enter hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun.  I did not know French sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always commenced mon cher ami, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase vous avez tort.  The ladies themselves had only just returned from Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several millions of francs against different foreign governments.