Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/136

 of a wall, looking over at each other. All I need is about twenty years more experience, or a sense of humor, or something equally vast.

Lost in his own depressing thoughts, Grover was scarcely listening to Vaudreuil's remarks about a new novel, when the name of Jean Cocteau smote his ears and roused him to a recollection of some animated discussions at the house of his French professor in Cambridge.

"Do you know Cocteau?" he asked.

"Very well. Shall we go round and see him?"

Grover could have cried out for relief. An offering at last and a promising one. As casually as possible he agreed that that might be a pleasant way to polish off the evening.

He had visions of being ushered into some recondite apartment on the left bank but was amazed to find himself being introduced to the celebrated young man in the kitchen of a cafe on the rue Caumartin. For a few moments he was not sure which was Cocteau and which was a dancer from the Casino de Paris. But as the hours drew on toward morning he didn't care. He was sitting and drinking gin rickeys in the company of a motley collection of actors, writers, painters, and unguessable creatures, male and female, including two hard-eyed American women from the middle west via Greenwich Village, a dishevelled countess who sniffed cocaine from an enamelled box, and a prize-fighter with polished fingernails. They were all talking