we would not even trouble to stare at the intruder. Yet he would
seldom stop to finish his consommation, or he would bolt it. He would
feel something in the air; he would know he was out of place. He would
fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the
street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve
didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace
in the bush. From half a dozen to a score of us dined at her long
table every evening; as many more drank her appetisers in the
afternoon, and came again at night for grog or coffee. You see, it was
a sort of club, a club of which Childe was at once the chairman and
the object. If we had had a written constitution, it must have begun:
'The purpose of this association is the enjoyment of the society of
Alfred Childe.'

Ah, those afternoons, those dinners, those ambrosial nights! If the
weather was kind, of course, we would begin our session on the
_terrasse_, sipping our vermouth, puffing our cigarettes, laughing our
laughs, tossing hither and thither our light ball of gossip, vaguely
conscious of the perpetual ebb and flow and murmur of people in the
Boulevard, while the setting sun turned Paris to a marvellous
water-colour, all pale lucent tints, amber and alabaster and
mother-of-pearl, with amethystine shadows. Then, one by one, those of
us who were dining elsewhere would slip away; and at a sign from
Hippolyte the others would move indoors, and take their places down
either side of the long narrow table, Childe at the head, his daughter
Nina next him. And presently with what a clatter of knives and forks,
clinking of glasses, and babble of human voices the Café Bleu would
echo. Madame Chanve's kitchen was not a thing to boast of, and her
price, for the Latin Quarter, was rather high--I think we paid three
francs, wine included, which would be for most of us distinctly a