sense of gratitude and wonder, Mr. Barnes came to time with: 'Do you
remember who was the idiot that paid you the seventy-five francs?'

"'Oh, yes, monsieur. It was you.'"



IV


It has occurred to me that of late years--I mean the years immediately
before 1914--Paris has been rather more bent upon adapting itself to human
and moral as well as scientific progress. There has certainly been less
debauchery visible to the naked eye. I was assured that the patronage had
so fallen away from the Moulin Rouge that they were planning to turn it
into a decent theater. Nor during my sojourn did anybody in my hearing so
much as mention the Dead Rat. I doubt whether it is still in existence.

The last time I was in Maxim's--quite a dozen years ago now--a young woman
sat next to me whose story could be read in her face. She was a pretty
thing not five and twenty, still blooming, with iron-gray hair. It had
turned in a night, I was told. She had recently come from Baltimore and
knew no more what she was doing or whither she was drifting than a baby.
The old, old story: a comfortable home and a good husband; even a child or
two; a scoundrel, a scandal, an elopement, and the inevitable desertion.
Left without a dollar in the streets of Paris. She was under convoy of a
noted procuress.

"A duke or the morgue," she whimpered, "in six months."