t walk away alone, but later they both walked away
together, arm-in-arm, to the hotel where they always stayed?--and do I
remember how, during the Boer War, he would come and dine with me alone,
his pockets stuffed with newspaper clippings, and how he would put them
by his plate, and how long we would sit at table because he would read
every one of them to me, with that gay laugh nobody laughs
nowadays?--and do I remember that other evening when he and Monsieur
disputed and disputed she didn't know about what, and how excited they
got, and how he kept banging the table with his knife, the sharp edge
down, until he cut a long slit in the cloth, and it was our best
tablecloth too?--and do I remember the long stories he would tell us
some evenings and his little mocking laugh when she, who could not
understand a word, knew he was saying something malicious about
somebody?--and do I remember how he liked a good dinner and her cooking
because it was French, and how he would never refuse when she promised
him her _pot-au-feu_ or one of her salads--and do I remember one after
another of those old nights the like of which we shall never see again?
Do I remember indeed? They fill too big a space in memory, they
overshadow too well the lesser nights with lesser men, they were too
joyous an episode in our thirty long years of talk for me ever to
forget them. The three classical knocks of the _Theatre Francais_ could
not announce more certainly a night of beauty or wit or fun or romance
than the violent ring and the resounding knock at the old battered door
of the Buckingham Street chambers where, for Whistler, the oak was never
sported.

But of our Whistler nights we have already made the record--this is
another tale that is already told. I think Whistler knew their value as
well as we did, knew what they cost us in the loss of friends, knew what
he had given us in return, knew what he had revealed to us of himself in
all friendliness, and that this was the reason he looked to us for the
record not only of his nights with us, but of his life. Once he had
confided that charge to us, the old Buckingham Street nights grew more
marvellous still, full of reminiscences, of comment, of criticism, of
friendliness, his talk none the less stimulating and splendid because,
at his request, the cuff or note-book was always ready. And they
continued until the long tragic weeks and months when he was first
afraid to go out at night and then unab