Clark smiled doubtfully. “I’ll try anything when it’s necessary,” he said. “We’ll have to work pretty fast and we’ll probably go broke buying drinks enough to put that tanker under the table.... But I can do that in these clothes—why the masquerade?” “Because then, wherever we are, we can go right along and get married without having to go back for me to change.” “You mean I’ll be the bride and you the man?” he demanded incredulously. “Surely.... You give me the papers and your belt and bars, and I’ll be Captain Winstead for the evening.” “It’s a go!” he agreed. “But I’ll keep my uniform on underneath, in case there should be any trouble. We can fix you up in the taxi on the way out to Corbeil.” So he left us and I set about pouring drinks into Ben while I explained about the Captain’s impending joke on his friends. Ben thought it an excellent joke. Said he’d much rather have a woman on the party than an officer, “because bars and badges give me the willies.” Note after note came out of my pocket never to return again. Clark came back, looking very modish in the outfit he had procured somewhere. We set out to let Ben drink the city dry, and I knew from the beginning that it was going to be a long drawn out process, because his capacity was really something to wonder at. I mean, it was just like a bottomless well, and a dozen drinks more or less didn’t make much difference in the total depth or effect. After we had visited four places, he began to get suspicious because we weren’t drinking with him, so Clark had to join him a few times.... We went on, from one wine shop to another, from café to buvette, from dive to cabaret, on and on through a never ending series of stops for things to dull the spirit and anæsthetize the mind of this persistent “best man.” I was beginning to wonder if we hadn’t better tell him the truth and let him be the “best man,” but when I stopped to think it over carefully, I concluded that this would be most inadvisable. I had to travel with him for months yet and besides when he got drunk he might tell anything he happened to remember.... The game went on. But no results, nor indications of success, rewarded our efforts. We plied him with drinks, and it seemed that the more we gave him the more sober he grew: it was just one of those nights in his life when he could have drunk every variety and vintage of wine, champagne, cognac, rum and gin, and still have stayed on his feet with an air of mastery. He simply defied our dreams of wedded bliss, and as the hours moved slowly by us, my dreams began to tumble into nothingness. At one place he decided that I was entirely too sober for the party and insisted that I join them in at least one good drink “just to please the nice lady”—meaning Clark. I couldn’t escape it, so I drank.