you are here. Quick! she is sliding the panel!"

Outside of Paris, overlooking the Seine, high up
on a hill, stands the Bellevue--a restaurant known
to half the world. Sweeping down from the perfectly
appointed tables lining the rail of the broad piazza;
skimming the tree-tops, the plain below, the twisting
river, rose-gold in the twilight, the dots of parks
and villas, the eye is lost in the distant city and the
haze beyond--the whole a-twinkle with myriads of
electric lights.

There, one night, from my seat against the opposite
wall (I was dining alone), I was amusing myself
watching a table being set with more than usual care;
some rich American, perhaps, with the world in a
sling, or some young Russian running the gauntlet
of the dressing-rooms. Staid old painters like myself
take an interest in these things. They serve to fill
his note-book, and sometimes help to keep him young.

When I looked again the waiter was drawing out
a chair for a woman with her back to me. In the
half-light, her figure, in silhouette against the cluster
of candles lighting the table, I could see that she was
young and, from the way she took her seat, wonderfully
graceful. Opposite her, drawing out his own
chair, stood a young man in evening dress, his head
outlined against the low, twilight sky. It was Mahmoud!