“Chablis?”

“Ay; and about ice?”

“My dear Q. M., when you have had a headache, has it ever fallen to your lot to be in the company of a pretty woman?”

“Else had I been one of the most neglected of men.”

“Well, she has fetched the Eau-de-Cologne, bathed your manly brow, and then blown her balmy breath over your temples.  That sweet coolness, my dear fellow, is my idea of the proper temperature for Chablis.”

“It’s a great bit of luck to pounce upon you, Bertram, when a man has only a few hours to spend in Paris, after a year or two’s absence.  Nearly upon two years have passed since I was here.  Yes, November, ’62—­now August, ’64.”

“In that time, my dear Q. M., reputations have been made and lost by the hundred.  I have had a score of eternal friendships.  You can run through the matrimonial gauntlet, from courtship to the Divorce Court, in that time.  We used to grieve for years:  now we weep as we travel; shed tears, as we cast grain, by machinery.  Two years!  Why, I have passed through half-a-dozen worlds.  My bosom friend of ’62 wouldn’t remember me if I met him to-morrow.  I met old Baron Desordres, who has made such a brilliant fiasco for everybody except himself, yesterday; I knew him in ’62 with poor little Bartle, who lent him a couple of thousands.  Bartle died last month.  In ’62 Desordres and Bartle were inseparable.  I said to the Baron yesterday, ‘You know poor little Bartle is dead.’  The Baron, picking his teeth, murmured, turning over the leaves of his memory, ‘Bartel!  Bartel! I remember—­un petit gros, vrai?’ and the leaves of the Baron’s memory were turned back, and Bartle was as much forgotten in five minutes as the burnt end of a cigarette.  I daresay his sisters are gone as governesses for want of the thousands the Baron ate.  Two years!  Two epochs!”

“I suppose so.  While the light burns, and the summer is on, the moths come out.  Tragedy, comedy, and farce elbow each other through the rooms.  I have seen very much myself, for bird of passage.  I took part in a strange incident when I passed through last time.”

“Tell your story, and drink your Roederer, my dear Q. M.”

“Story!  I want to get at the story.  I travelled with a man and his wife from Folkestone to Paris.  On the boat he was the most attentive of husbands; at the terminus he had disappeared.  Poor woman in tears; fell into my arms, sir, by Jove!”

“No story!” cried Bertram, winking at the floating air-beads in his glass.  “No story! my good, simple Q.M.  Egad! what would you have?  Pray go on.”

“Go on!  I’ve finished.  I was off in the afternoon by the Marseilles mail.  Of course, I did my utmost to find the husband.  She went to the Windsor; I thought it would be quiet for her.  I went to the police, paid to have inquiries kept up in all the hotels; and lastly, put her in communication with a good business man—­Moffum, you know; and left her, a wreck of one of the prettiest creatures I have ever seen.”