made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly.  In due course they went out to dinner and afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan’s favourite place of amusement.  By the end of the evening he was in his most extravagant humour.  He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from which he suffered was due much more to his own vivacity than to alcohol.  He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented.  They sat down at a table on the platform at the side, raised a little from the level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank a bock.  Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were dancing.  Philip watched the people.  Bullier was not the resort of fashion.  It was Thursday night and the place was crowded.  There were a number of students of the various faculties, but most of the men were clerks or assistants in shops; they wore their everyday clothes, ready-made tweeds or queer tail-coats, and their hats, for they had brought them in with them, and when they danced there was no place to put them but their heads.  Some of the women looked like servant-girls, and some were painted hussies, but for the most part they were shop-girls.  They were poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of the river.  The hussies were got up to resemble the music-hall artiste or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes were heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet.  The hall was lit by great white lights, low down, which emphasised the shadows on the faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it, and the colours were most crude.  It was a sordid scene.  Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music.  They danced furiously.  They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance.  The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat.  It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were.  In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal:  some were foxy and some were wolf-like; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep.  Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate.  Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning.  There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts.  The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity.  But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment.  They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror.  The desire