d champagne in a room with mouldering
greenish wall-paper lighted by a red-shaded lamp.

The Australians ate and sang and made love to their women. The
Englishman went to sleep with his head on the table.

Martin leaned back out of the circle of light, keeping up a desultory
conversation with the woman beside him, listening to the sounds of the
men's voices down corridors, of the front door being opened and slammed
again and again, and of forced, shrill giggles of women.

"Unfortunately, I have an engagement to-night," said Martin to the woman
beside him, whose large spherical breasts heaved as she talked, and who
rolled herself nearer to him invitingly, seeming with her round pop-eyes
and her round cheeks to be made up entirely of small spheres and large
soft ones.

"Oh, but it is too late. You can break it."

"It's at four o'clock."

"Then we have time, ducky."

"It's something really romantic, you see."

"The young are always lucky." She rolled her eyes in sympathetic
admiration. "This will be the fourth night this week that I have not
made a sou.... I'll chuck myself into the river soon."

Martin felt himself softening towards her. He slipped a twenty-franc
note in her hand.

"Oh, you are too good. You are really galant homme, you."

Martin buried his face in his hands, dreaming of the woman he would like
to love to-night. She should be very dark, with red lips and stained
cheeks, like Randolph's girl; she should have small breasts and slender,
dark, dancer's thighs, and in her arms he could forget everything but
the madness and the mystery and the intricate life of Paris about them.
He thought of Montmartre, and Louise in the opera standing at her window
singing the madness of Paris....

One of the Australians had gone away with a little woman in a pink
negligee. The other Australian and the Englishman were standing
unsteadily near the table, each supported by a sleepy-looking girl.
Leaving the fat woman sadly finishing the remains of the chicken, large
tears rolling from her eyes, they left the house and walked for a long
time down dark streets, three men and two women, the Englishman being
supported in the middle, singing in a desultory fashion.

They stopped under a broken sign of black letters on greyish glass,
within which one feeble electric light bulb made a red glow. The
pavement was wet, and glimmered where it slanted up to the lamp-post at
the next corner.

"Here we are. Come along, Jane