un up two or three flights of stairs....

"_Madame--, est-elle chez elle?_"

"_Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer._" And
we were shown into a handsomely furnished apartment. A lady would enter
hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French
sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always
commenced _mon cher ami_, and was plentifully sprinkled with the
phrase _vous avez tort_. The ladies themselves had only just returned
from Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in
mysterious lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for
several millions of francs against different foreign governments.

And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years ago, at
the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I watched this
world of Parisian adventurers and lights o' love. And this craving for
observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation of gestures
and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes that mirror forth
the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew and strengthened, to
the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me. With the patience of a
cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened, picking one characteristic
phrase out of hours of vain chatter, interested and amused by an angry or
loving glance. Like the midges that fret the surface of a shadowy stream,
these men and women seemed to me; and though I laughed, danced, and made
merry with them, I was not of them. But with Marshall it was different:
they were my amusement, they were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of
this distinction that made twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it.
Why could I not live without an ever-present and acute consciousness of
life? Why could I not love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in
the perfumed silence of the chamber?

And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The
general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent
contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced to
one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our confidences
knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain confidences it is
often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read, or felt was the
subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that a flush of
colour and a bit of perspective awakens,