fire-flies of an evening in the West Indies--like one string of light."

"Mon Dieu! Come to the inner room, if you please, sir, and tell me more.
What a good angel which has sent you here! Twenty-five years since I
have seen my Paris. And the Tuileries, my friend, is it yet the same?"

"Just the same, M'sieu, a million bare-legged children with short white
socks running wild, and another half a million nurses with white caps
running wild after them. And the Eiffel Tower! But that's since your
time, M'sieu Perrault?"

"Ah--h, but have I not heard? Continue, continue, if you please, sir.
You bring a strange joy to my heart. The Louvre, for example--you have
been there, yes?"

"Been there? Yes, and 'most googoo-eyed from looking at the pictures
there--miles of 'em, aren't there?"

"Oh-h! and Mona Lisa--yes!"

"That dark one with the queer kind of a smile? She must have had green
eyes, that one--green eyes with lights in them. And she kept them all
guessing, I'll bet a hat, when she was alive--" and Bowen ran on till
every blessed breakwater man silently stole away. Bowen and old Perrault
had a three o'clock session that first night; and within the year he had
married Claire.


II