I lay on my back with my eyes shut, trying not to hear any of the sounds
in the _wagon-lit_ (and they were not confined to the snoring of His
Majesty), thinking desperately. "I will concentrate all my mentality,"
said I to myself, "on thoughts beginning with P, for instance. My Past.
Paris. Pamela."

Just for a few minutes it was comparatively easy. "Dear Past!" I sighed,
with a great sigh which for divers reasons I was sure couldn't be heard
beyond my own berth. (And though I try always even to _think_ in
English, I find sometimes that the words group themselves in my head in
the old patterns--according to French idioms.) "Dear Past, how thou wert
kind and sweet! How it is brutalizing to turn my back upon thee and thy
charms forever!"

"Oh, my goodness, I shall certainly die!" squeaked a voice in the berth
underneath; and then there was a sound of wallowing.

She (my stable-companion, shall I call her?) had been giving vent to all
sorts of strange noises at intervals, for a long time, so that it would
have been hopeless to try and drown my sorrows in sleep.

Away went the Gentle Past with a bump, as if it had knocked against a
snag in the current of my thoughts.

Paris or Pamela instead, then! or both together, since they seem
inseparable, even when Pamela is at her most American, and tells me to
"talk United States."

It was all natural to think of Pamela, because it was she who gave me