arge street, and a grand street, but
it certainly doesn't awaken the gracious and noble thoughts that the Rue
Royale suggests to every sensitive mind; nor has it the dignity of the
Place Vendome. The Place de la Bourse, he says, is in the daytime babble
and prostitution, but at night it is beautiful. At two o'clock in the
morning, by moonlight, it is a dream of old Greece."

"I don't see much in that. What you said about the villas was quite as
good."

Fearing that the conversation lacked a familiar and personal interest,
he sought a transition, an idea by which he could connect it with Evelyn
herself. With this object he called her attention to two young men who,
he pretended, reminded him of Rastignac and Morny. That woman in the
mail phaeton was an incipient Madame Marneffe; that dark woman now
looking at them with ardent, amorous eyes might be an Esther.

"We're all creatures of Balzac's imagination. You," he said, turning a
little so that he might see her better, "are intensely Balzacian."

"Do I remind you of one of his characters?" Evelyn became more keenly
interested. "Which one?"

"You are more like a character he might have painted than anyone I can
think of in the Human Comedy. He certainly would have been interested in
your temperament. But I can't think which of his women is like you. You
are more like the adorable Lucien; that is to say, up to the present."

"Who was Lucien?"

"He was the young poet whom all Paris fell in love with. He came up to
Paris with a married woman; I think they came from Angouleme. I haven't
read _Lost Illusions_ for twenty years. She and he were the stars in the
society of some provincial town, but when they arrived in Paris each
thought the other very common and countrified. He compares her with
Madame d'Espard; she compares him with Rastignac; Balzac completes the
picture with a touch of pure genius--'They forgot that six months would
transform them both into exquisite Parisians.' How good that is, what
wonderful insight into life!"

"And do they become Parisians?"

"Yes, and then they both regret that they broke off--"

"Could they not begin it again?"

"No; it is rarely that a _liaison_ can be begun again--life is too
hurried. We may not go back; the past may never become the
present--ghosts come between."

"Then if I broke it off with you, or you broke it off with me, it would
be for ever?"

"Do not let us discuss such unpleasant possibilities;" and he contin