I shall never forget how she looked at me, quite in the spirit of a gay uncertain child, and how quickly she made me feel that we would get along very well together. “Why, yes,” she said quite easily in her soft voice, “I will go about with you, although I would not know what is best to see. But I shall be here, and if you want to come for me we can see things together.” Suddenly she reached over and took my hand and squeezed it genially, as though to seal the bargain. We had more drinks to celebrate this rather festive occasion; and then Mme. de B., promising to join us at the theater, went away. It was high time then to dress for dinner; and so we returned to the hotel. We ate a companionable meal, watching the Parisian and his lady love (or his wife) arrive in droves and dine with that gusto and enthusiasm which is so characteristic of the French. When we came out of this theater at half after eleven, Mme. de B. was anxious to return to her apartment, and Barfleur was anxious to give me an extra taste of the varied café life of Paris in order that I might be able to contrast and compare intelligently. “If you know where they are and see whether you like them, you can tell whether you want to see any more of them--which I hope you won’t,” said he wisely, leading the way through a swirling crowd that was for all the world like a rushing tide of the sea. There are no traffic laws in Paris, so far as I could make out; vehicles certainly have the right-of-way and they go like mad. I have read of the Parisian authorities having imported a London policeman to teach Paris police the art of traffic regulation, but if so, the instruction has been wasted. This night was a bedlam of vehicles and people. A Paris guide, one of the tribe that conducts the morbid stranger through scenes that are supposedly evil, and that I know from observation to be utterly vain, approached us in the Boulevard des Capucines with the suggestion that he be allowed to conduct us through a realm of filthy sights, some of which he catalogued. I could give a list of them if I thought any human organization would ever print them, or that any individual would ever care to read them--which I don’t. I have indicated before that Barfleur is essentially clean-minded. He is really interested in the art of the demi-mondaine, and the spectacle which their showy and, to a certain extent, artistic lives present; but no one in this world ever saw more clearly through the shallow make-believe of this realm than he does. He contents himself with admiring the art and the tragedy and the pathos of it. This world of women interests him as a phase of the struggle for existence, and for the artistic pretense which it sometimes compels. To him the vast majority of these women in Paris were artistic--whatever one might say for their morals, their honesty, their brutality and the other qualities which they possess or lack; and whatever they were, life made