no bright colours--excepting for men's uniforms. In the windows
of the millinery shops, purple is the gayest colour--purple and
lavender and black prevail. On every street are blind windows of
departed shops. Some bear signs notifying customers that they are
closed for the duration of the war; others simply stare blankly
and piteously at passersby who know the story without words.

Yet if it is not a gay Paris, it is anything but a sad Paris. Rather
it is a busy Paris; a Paris that stays indoors and works. For an
hour or two after twilight the crowds come out; Sunday also they
throng the boulevards. And the theatres are always well filled;
and there the bright dress uniforms of the men overcome the sombre
gowns of the women and the scenes in lobbies and foyers are not far
from brilliant. Bands and orchestras play in the theatres, but the
music lacks fire. It is beautiful music, carefully done, artistically
executed, but the orchestras are made up for the most part of men
past the military age. We heard "La Tosca" one afternoon and in
the orchestra sat twenty men with grey hair and the tenor was fat!
As the season grew old, we heard "Louise," "Carmen," "Aphrodite,"
"Butterfly" (in London), and "Aida" (in Milan), and always the
musical accompaniment to the social vagaries of these ladies who
are no better than they should be, was music from old heads and
old hearts. The "other lips and other hearts whose tales of love"
should have been told ardently through fiddle and clarinet are
toying with the great harp of a thousand strings that plays the dance
of death. That is the music the young men are playing in Europe
today. But in Paris, busy, drab, absent-minded Paris, the music
that should be made from the soul of youth, crying into reeds
and strings and brass is an echo, an echo altogether lovely but
passionless!