the crowd
divided from them by the space of waxed floor, from which the Spanish
dancers had just retreated.

Max raised his glass and drank some of his champagne. His first dread of
the place was gripping him again--exciting him, confusing him. All about
him, like the scent-laden atmosphere itself, moved the crowd--the girls
of Montmartre and their cavaliers. Everywhere was that sense of
conscious enjoyment--that grasping of the mere moment that the Parisian
has reduced to a science. It enveloped him like a veil--the artless
artificiality of Paris! Everywhere fans emblazoned with the words Bal
Tabarin fluttered like butterflies, everywhere cigar smoke mingled with
the essences from the women's clothes, but beneath it all lurked a
something unanalyzed, dimly understood, that chained his imagination. It
hung about him; it crouched behind the women's expectant eyes; then
suddenly it sprang forth like an ugly beast into a perfumed garden.

It came in a moment: a little scuffle at the bar opposite, as a heavy,
fair-bearded man disengaged himself from the crowd about him, a little
flutter of interest as he made an unsteady way across the waxed floor, a
little smothered scream from the girl as he lurched up to the table and
paused, gazing at her with angry, bloodshot eyes.

For a second of silence the two looked at each other--the girl with a
frightened, fascinated gaze, the man with the slow insolence that drink
induces. At last, muttering some words in a guttural tongue unknown to
the boy, he swayed forward and laid a heavy red hand upon her shoulder.

The gesture was brutal, masterful, expressive. A sense of mental
sickness seized upon Max; while the woman Lize suddenly braced herself,
changing from the inert, half-hypnotized creature of a moment before
into a being of fury.

"_Sapristi_!" she cried aloud. "A pretty lover to come wooing!" And she
added a phrase that had never found place in Max's vocabulary, and at
which the surrounding people laughed.

The words and the laugh were tow to the fire of the man's rage. He freed
the girl's arm and struck the table with a resounding violence that made
the glasses dance.

It was the signal for a scene. In a second people at the neighboring
tables rose to their feet, chairs were overturned, a torrent of words
poured forth from both actors and spectators, while through everything
and above everything the band poured forth an intoxicating waltz.

Max, forgetful of himself,