u do not mind coming with me, Barres?" he added. "In my rooms we
can have a bite and a glass together, and then we can brush up. That
was a nice little fight, was it not, mon ami?"

"Fine," said Barres with satisfaction.

"Quite like the old and happy days," mused Renoux, surveying wilted
collar and rumpled tie of his comrade. "You came off well; you have
merely a bruised cheek." His eyes began to sparkle and he laughed: "Do
you remember that May evening when your very quarrelsome atelier
barricaded the Cafe de la Source and forbade us to enter--and my
atelier marched down the Boul' Mich' with its Kazoo band playing our
atelier march, determined to take your cafe by assault? Oh, my! What a
delightful fight that was!"

"Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish.
I thought I'd drown," said Barres, laughing.

"I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you
came over to Mueller's with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman's
March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green
tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine!----"

They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and
holding to each other.

"Do you remember," gasped Barres, "that girl who danced the Carmagnole
on the Quay?"

"Yvonne Tete-de-Linotte!"

"And the British giant from Julien's, who threw everybody out of the
Cafe Montparnasse and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?"

"McNeil!"

"What ever became of that pretty girl, Doucette de Valmy?"

"Oh, it was she who cheered on your atelier to the assault on
Muellers!----"

Laughter stifled them.

"What crazy creatures we all were," said Renoux, staunching the last
crimson drops oozing from his nose. Then, more soberly: "We French
have a grimmer affair over there than the joyous rows of the Latin
Quarter. I'm sorry now that we didn't throw every waiter in Mueller's
after the bay-trees. There would have been so many fewer spies to
betray France."

The taxi stopped at the 44th Street entrance to the Astor. They
descended, Renoux leading, walked through the corridor to Peacock
Alley, turned to the right through the bar, then to the left into the
lobby, and thence to the elevator.

In Renoux's rooms they turned on the electric light, locked the door,
closed the transom, then spread their plunder out on a table.

To Renoux's disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of
clippings fro