Happiness, he decided, did not mean content, or glee, or merriment, or satisfaction. It did not mean joy. It might include any or all of these, but it meant more than each and more than all.... Flecker played pool with the Peruvian. Red ball into the corner pocket. Click. Roll on. Roll ON. If it had hit the cushion just a bit harder, he said to himself, it would have gone pop into the pocket and then the blue ball over there, and the yellow, and--well, sweep the table, everybody in the _Café du Dome_ clustered around looking, mouths open, eyebrows up in unanimous awe. Play another game? There, he won the break. He moved around the table with stiff, short steps, pulling his chin up from his collar, yawning. Click. Click. Click!! While the Peruvian nervously watched, passing his palm over and over his shining black hair, Flecker went on without a miss. The last was a long shot. Flecker drove his cue ball hard. It hopped the cushion, shot through the air and struck the _patron_ (whom Flecker owed thirty francs) on the head. He fell without genuflexion like a tree, or a tower. Around him formed a crowd, from the dark mass of which white faces turned to stare at Flecker. A _gendarme_ shouldered his way through the door.... Having scored six the Peruvian grounded his cue. It was Flecker's turn again. He did not notice but stood staring into space, his blue eyes wide open, fixed. "_Assassin!_" shouted the imaginary _gendarme_. "_Jouez!_" shouted the real Peruvian. Flecker started awake and played and missed. The game bored him suddenly. Lighting a limp cigarette, salvaged from a corner of his pocket, he puffed a cloud and asked: "What would you do if you were happy all the time?" "Smile," said the Peruvian. "But," he added cleverly, after a moment, "a persistent smile is a grin." "What would you say happiness is?" "_Comment?_ I haven't even had my lunch and already you start talk like that? How should I know?" He shot and missed. "I'll tell you what it isn't! It isn't an onion!" The game was on Flecker. When he smiled at the _patron_ for still another extension of credit, and got it, he remembered how he had imaginatively killed the generous fellow with the cue ball, and was ashamed. The sun was too bright. The noise of motor traffic in the boulevard was deafening. They stopped at the curb under a young tree with leaves like emeralds. "Happiness," shouted the Peruvian wood engraver, as if the question had just been put, "is having hope, and no pain, and hardly any----" A taxi hooted in front of them and Flecker lost the word. "What?" he yelled, "hardly any what?" "Fear!" Happiness is more than _that_, thought Flecker, walking away toward the Gardens. Setting his easel near a blossoming pear tree which stood crucified fanwise against a lattice, Flecker's mind found and turned over a strange idea. Was _he_ happy? With all his unfulfilled desires? With holes in his shoes? No hat? No letter from Waterville?