ile--however deprecatingly, for form's
sake--and in the main agree with him, as became my situation in life; my
class. I had supposed myself incapable of moral shock, but found now
that the sincerity of his cynicism had unquestionably shocked me; I felt
suddenly embarrassed, awkward, ashamed.

"Dalt," I finally managed, pretty lamely, "it's absurd, I admit; but if
I try to answer you, I shall lose my temper. I mean it. And as I've
dined wonderfully at your expense, that's something I don't care to do."

It was his turn to stare at me.

"Do you mean to say, Hunt, you've been caught by all this sentimental
parson's palaver? Brotherhood, peace on earth, all the rest of it?"

My nerves snapped. "If you insist on a straight answer," I said, "you
can have it: I've no use for a world that spiritually starves its poets
and saints, and physically fattens its hyenas and hogs! And if that
isn't sentimental enough for you, I can go farther!"

"Oh, that'll do," he laughed, uncomfortably however. "I'm always
forgetting you're a scribbler, of sorts. You scribblers are all
alike--emotionally diseased. If you'd only stick to your real job of
amusing the rest of us, it wouldn't matter. It's when you try to reform
us that I draw the line; have to. I can't afford to grow
brainsick--abnormal. Well," he added, pushing back his chair, "come
along anyway! We've just time to get over to the Casino and have a look
at the only Gaby. Been there? It's a cheap show, after Broadway, but it
does well enough to pass the time."

From this unalluring suggestion I begged off, justly pleading a hard day
of work ahead. "And if you don't mind, Dalt, I'll walk home."

"Oh, all right," he agreed; "I'll walk along with you, if you'll take it
easy. I'm not much for exercise, you know. But it's a perfect night."

I had hoped ardently to be rid of him, but I managed to accept his
company with apparent good grace, and we strolled down the Avenue Victor
Hugo toward the Triumphal Arch, bathed now in clearest moonlight,
standing forth to all Paris as a cruelly ironic symbol of Hope, never
relinquished, but endlessly deferred. Turning there, the Champs-Elysees,
all but deserted at that hour in wartime Paris, stretched on before us
down a gentle slope, half dusky, half glimmering, and wholly silent
except for our lonesome-sounding footfalls and the distant faint
plopping of a lame cab-horse's stumbling heels.

"Not much like the old town we knew once, eh, Hunt?