Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/133

 a letter to Geoffrey Saint: "Well, on this day of grace, Life began—"

Meanwhile he had only one object, and that was to cultivate the friendship of this pale young man until it led him to the door of the great painter. But how, he wondered, in a sudden panic, does one cultivate this elusive kind of being? Is it enough to offer them meals, or have they strange subterranean tastes that have to be catered to? Does one have to go to dives with them and respond to baleful creatures who come and sit on one's knee? He felt lonely, and a little outclassed. In Boston you would have dinner in a hotel and go to a theatre and feel that the evening had been more or less adequately passed.

The street lights were aglow and the afternoon had perceptibly turned into night. People who had been crowding the terrasse were drifting away into the noisy chaos of busses and tramcars. Across the way clerks and shop girls were streaming into the station to catch suburban trains. Waiters were laying cloths on marble tables in preparation for dinner. The peculiar odor of Paris, a mixture of petrol and sour wine and steamed vegetables, rose with renewed force from the pavements, Though he was by now sufficiently accustomed to his setting to take it pretty largely for granted, Grover was every now and again lifted out of himself by the exotic thrall of Paris. There was something exhilaratingly unreal in being a part of it which lent a touch of adventure to the simplest