impossible--even of things as impossible as that. If Elinor had only been
older before the war came along and changed so much.

He saw another little mental photograph, the kind of photograph, he mused,
that sleekly shabby Frenchmen slip from under views of the Vendome
Column and Napoleon's Tomb when they are trying to sell tourists picture
post-cards outside the Cafe de la Paix. Judged by American standards the
work would be called rather frank. It was all interior--the interior of a
room in a Montmartre hotel--and there were two people in it to help out
the composition--and the face of one seemed somehow to be rather deathly
familiar--

That, and Elinor. Why, Hook Nose could "reform" all the rest of his life in
accordance with the highest dictionary standards--and still he wouldn't be
fit to look at his princess, even from inside a cage.

Also, if you happened to be of a certain analytic temperament you could see
what was happening to yourself all the while quite plainly--oh, much too
plainly!--and yet that seemed to make very little difference in its going
on happening. There was Mrs. Severance, for instance. He had been seeing
quite a good deal of Mrs. Severance lately.

"Oh, Ted!" from Peter next door. "Snap it up, old keed, or we'll all of us
be late for lunch."

They had just sat down to lunch and Peter was complaining that the whipped
cream on the soup made him feel as if he were eating cotton-batting, when a
servant materialized noiselessly beside Oliver's chair.

"Telephone for you, Mr. Crowe. Western Union calling."