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 timate effect of Paris? If a little of Paris intoxicates you, perhaps a lot of it drugs you. The cab had arrived at the Place du Tertre.

"If you don't mind my making a suggestion," said Vaudreuil, as Grover led the way to the nearest restaurant, "we might dine across the way, over there in the corner. They give you an excellent château-briand quite cheap, and the vin de la maison is better than most vins bouchés."

Grover acceded with alacrity, grateful for this sign of life. Every Frenchman, he reflected, even the palest, knows where the best food is, and to look at this one you'd never guess that he ate more than two or three times a week. Perhaps, he thought, with a sudden shock of illumination, the poor devil doesn't!

All through dinner, as they talked of Paris and art and the theatre and women, Grover had the impression of being in the presence of something unfathomable. The wine fulfilled its promise,—a pale, rose-gray fluid in thick decanters,—and made for the friendly give and take that had so far been lacking. Even so, at the end of two hours, Grover felt that the "cultivation" of his new acquaintance had not even got a start. At any moment the Frenchman might get up, bid him a courteous farewell, and walk off into the intriguing nothingness from which he had emerged. Grover's resources were exhausted. The very thought of any further effort wearied him. I and Frenchmen, he was thinking, are doomed to stand on opposite sides