entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words
that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her
sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an
appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the
morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her.

I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but
now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the
sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was
so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough,
and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience
opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my
arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the
Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself;
but now I was taken to strange students' _cafés_, where dinners were
paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a _table d'hôte_ was
held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great
crowds to _Bullier_, the _Château Rouge_, or the _Elysée Montmartre_.
The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the
thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women--we only knew
their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling
through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer
night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing
glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a
magic lantern out of the sky.

Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons
were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this
street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop"
to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs....