Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/115

By Ménie Muriel Dowie It here struck me that the beginning of Wladislaw's first adventure in Paris was highly unoriginal; but I waited with a tempered interest to hear how he had dealt with it. Here are his own words, but losing much of their quaintness by being rendered in an English which even I cannot make quite ungrammatical.

"I went on very quickly a little way, then I walked slowly, slowly—very slow, and turned suddenly sharp round. Yes, I was being followed: there he was, a man in a black frock coat, and

"A man?" I blurted out, having been somehow unprepared for this development.

"What else?" said Wladislaw. "Did you think it was going to be a cat?"

Well, more or less, I had fancied. . . . but I wouldn't interrupt him.

"Black coat and grey trousers, black bow tie and one of those hats, you know? With his cigarette hand he made a rapid pantomime about his head that outlined sufficiently the flat-brimmed top hat of the artistic Frenchman, so often distinguished, but more usually a little ridiculous.

"I went on at an ordinary pace till I came to the Rue de Rivoli, then at that Café where the omnibus for St. Sulpice stops I waited"—Wladislaw's eyes were gleaming with an unwonted mischief, and he had quite lost his Judaic majesty—"to get a good look. There he was. A man not yet forty; dark, interesting, powerful face; a red ribbon in his button-hole."

"A red ribbon?" But then I remembered that every second Frenchman has a red ribbon.

"I thought, 'Shall I take him a nice walk this cold evening? Shall I go down and cross the river to Notre Dame, then home up the Boulevard St. Michel?' But no, it was late. I had had