eloped, were to be waved and the
balls to be thrown. You were supposed to catch as many as were thrown
at you and throw them back. It was wonderful fun--or would have been for
children--and very, very amusing--after the second bottle.

For my part I found it very stupid. As I have said at least once in this
history I am not what is called a "good mixer" and in an assemblage like
this I was as out of place as a piece of ice on a hot stove. Worse than
that, for the ice would have melted and I congealed the more. My bottle
of champagne remained almost untouched and when a celluloid ball bounced
on the top of my head I did not scream "Whoopee! Bullseye!" as my
American neighbors did or "Voila! Touche!" like the French. There were
plenty of Americans and English there, and they seemed to be having a
good time, but their good time was incomprehensible to me. This was "gay
Paris," of course, but somehow the gaiety seemed forced and artificial
and silly, except to the proprietors of L'Abbaye. If I had been getting
the price for food and liquids which they received I might, perhaps,
have been gay.

The young Frenchman at my right was gay enough. He had early discovered
my nationality and did his best to be entertaining. When a performer
from the Olympia, the music hall on the Boulevard des Italiens, sang a
distressing love ballad in a series of shrieks like those of a circular
saw in a lumber mill, this person shouted his "Bravos" with the rest and
then, waving his hands before my face, called for, "De cheer Americain!
One, two, tree--Heep! Heep! Heep! Oo--ray-y-y!" I did not join in "the
cheer Americain," but I did burst out laughing, a proceeding which
caused the young lady at my left to pat my arm and nod delighted
approval. She evidently thought I was becoming gay and lighthearted at
last. She was never more mistaken.

It was nearly two o'clock and I had had quite enough of L'Abbaye. I had
not enjoyed myself--had not expected to, so far as that went. I hope I
am not a prig, and, whatever I am or am not, priggishness had no part in
my feelings then. Under ordinary circumstances I should not have enjoyed
myself in a place like that. Mine is not the temperament--I shouldn't
know how. I must have appeared the most solemn ass in creation, and if I
had come there with the idea of amusement, I should have felt like one.
As it was, my feeling was not disgust, but unreasonable disappointment.
Certainly I did not wish--now that I ha