One night, in a small bar or bistro upon the hill of Montmartre, Starwick met a young Frenchman who was to become the companion of his adventures in many strange and devious ways thereafter. It was about four o’clock in the morning: after the usual nightly circuit of the gilded pleasure resorts, cafés and more unsavoury dives and stews of the district, Starwick had become very drunk and unruly, had quarrelled with Elinor and Ann when they tried to take him home, and since that time had been wandering aimlessly through the district, going from one cheap bar to another.

The women hung on doggedly; Starwick had refused to let them accompany him, and they had asked Eugene to stay with him and try to keep him out of trouble. Eugene, in fact, was only less drunk than his companion, but fortified by that sense of pride and duty which a trust imposed by two lovely women can give a young man, he hung on, keeping pace with Starwick, drink for drink, until the whole night fused into a drunken blur, a rout of evil faces, the whole to be remembered later as jags of splintered light upon a chain of darkness, as flying images, fixed, instant, and intolerably bright, in the great blank of memory. And out of all these blazing pictures of the night and the wild reel of their debauch, one would remain for ever after to haunt his vision mournfully. It was the memory — or rather the CONSCIOUSNESS— of the two women, Ann and Elinor, waiting in the dark, following the blind weave of their drunken path, all through the mad kaleidoscope of night, never approaching them, but always there. He had not seemed to look at them, to notice them, and yet later he had always known that they were there. And the memory fused to one final mournful image that was to return a thousand times to haunt him in the years to come. He and Starwick had come out of one of the bars that broke the darkness of the long steep hill, and were reeling down past shuttered stores and old dark houses towards the invitation of another blaze of light.

Suddenly he knew that Ann and Elinor were behind them. For a moment he turned, and saw the two women pacing slowly after them, alone, patient, curiously enduring. The image of that long silent street of night, walled steeply with old houses and shuttered shops, and of the figures of these two women pacing slowly behind them, in the darkness, seemed in later years to bear the sorrowful legend of what their lives — of what so much of life — was to become. And for this reason it burned for ever in his memory with a mournful, dark and haunting radiance, became, in fact, detached from names and personalities and identic histories — became something essential, everlasting and immutable in life. It was an image of fruitless love and lost devotion, of a love that would never come to anything, and of beautiful life that must be ruinously consumed in barren adoration of a lost soul, a cold and unresponding heart. And it was all wrought mournfully there into the scheme of night, made legible in the quiet and gracious loveliness of these two women, so strong, so patient, and so infinitely loyal, pacing slowly down behind two drunken boys in the slant steep street and emptiness of night.

Suddenly the image blazed to the structure of hard actuality: another bar, and all around hoarse laughter, high sanguinary voices, a sudden scheme of faces scarred with night, and vivid with night’s radiance — prostitutes, taxi-drivers, negroes, and those other nameless unmistakable ones — who come from somewhere — God knows where — and who live somehow — God knows how — and who recede again at morning into unknown cells — but who live here only, brief as moths, and balefully as a serpent’s eye, in the unwholesome chemistry of night.

He found himself leaning heavily on the zinc counter of the bar, staring at a pair of whited, flabby-looking arms, the soiled apron and shirt, the soiled night-time face and dark, mistrustful eyes of night’s soiled barman. The blur of hoarse voices, shouts and oaths and laughter fused around him, and suddenly beside him he heard Starwick’s voice, drunken, quiet, and immensely still.

“Monsieur,” it said — its very stillness cut like a knife through all the fog of sound about him —“monsieur, du feu, s’il vous pla?t.”

“But sairtainlee, monsieur,” a droll and pleasant-sounding voice said quietly. “W’y not?”

He turned and saw Starwick, a cigarette between his lips, bending awkwardly to get the light from a proffered cigarette which a young Frenchman was holding carefully for him. At last he got it; puffing awkwardly, and straightening, he slightly raised his hat in salutation, and said with drunken gravity:

“Merci. Vous êtes bien gentil.”

“But,” said the young Frenchman again, drolly, and with a slight shrug of his shoulder, “not at all! Eet ees noz-zing!”

And as Starwick started to look at him with grave drunken eyes, the Frenchman returned his look with a glance that was perfectly composed, friendly, good-humoured, and drolly inquiring.

“Monsieur?” he said courteously, as Starwick continued to look at him.

“I think,” said Starwick slowly, with the strangely mannered and almost womanish intonation in his voice, “I think I like you VERY much. You are VERY kind, and VERY generous, and altogether a VERY grand person. I am ENORMOUSLY grateful to you.”

“But,” the Frenchman said, with droll surprise, and a slight astonished movement of his shoulders, “I ‘ave done noz-zing! You ask for du feu — a light — and I geev to you. I am glad eef you like — bot —” again he shrugged his shoulders with a cynical but immensely engaging humour —“eet ees not so ver-ree grand.”

He was a young man, not more than thirty years old, somewhat above middle height, with a thin, nervously active figure, and thin, pointedly Gallic features. It was a pleasant, most engaging face, full of a sharply cynical intelligence; the thin mouth was alive with humour — with the witty and politely cynical disbelief of his race, and his tone, his manner — everything about him — was eloquent with this racial quality of disbelief, a quality that was perfectly courteous, that would raise its pointed eyebrows and say politely, “You s’ink so”— but that accepted without assent, was politely non-committal without agreement.

He was dressed as many young Frenchmen of that period dressed:— a style that served to combine the sinister toughness of the Apache with a rather gaudy and cheap enhancement of the current fashions. His clothes were neat but cheaply made; he wore a felt hat with a wide brim, creased, French fashion, up the sides, an overcoat with padded shoulders, cut in sharply at the waist, his trousers had a short and skimpy look, and barely covered the tops of his shoes. He wore spats, and a rather loud-coloured scarf which he knotted loosely, cravat-fashion, and which thus concealed his collar and his shirt. Finally, when he smoked a cigarette, he drew the smoke in slowly, languorously, knowingly, with lidded eyes, and a cruel and bitter convulsion of his thin lips that gave his sharp face a sinister Apache expression.

Starwick was now crying out in a high drunken tone of passionate assurance:

“But yes! Yes! Yes! — You are a GRAND person — a SWELL person — I like you ENORMOUSLY . . . .”

“I am glad,” said the Frenchman politely, with another almost imperceptible movement of the shoulders.

“But yes! You are my friend!” Starwick cried in a high passionate tone. “I like you — you must drink with me.”

“Eef you like — of course!” the Frenchman politely agreed. Turning to the soiled barman who continued to look at them with dark mistrustful eyes, he said, in a hard, sharp voice, “Une fine. . . . And you, monsieur?” he turned inquiringly toward Eugene, “I s’ink you have another drink?”

“No, not now”— his glass was not yet empty. “We — we have both already had something to drink.”

“I can see,” the Frenchman said politely, but with a swift flicker of cynical mirth across his thin mouth, that needed no translation. Raising his glass, he said courteously:

“A votre santé, messieurs,” and drank.

“Look!” cried Starwick. “You are our friend now, and you must call us by our names. My name is Frank; his is Eugene — what is yours?”

“My name ees Alec,” said the young Frenchman smiling. “Zat ees w’at zey call me.”

“But it’s perfect!” Starwick cried enthusiastically. “It’s a SWELL name — a WONDERFUL name! Alec! — Ecoute!” he said to the soiled barman with the ugly eye, “Juh pawnse qu’il faut — encore du cognac,” he said drunkenly, making a confused and maudlin gesture with his arm. “Encore du cognac, s’il vous pla?t!” And as the barman silently and sullenly filled the three glasses from a bottle on the bar, Starwick turned to Alec, shouting with dangerous hilarity: “Cognac for ever, Alec, Alec! — Cognac for you and me and all of us for ever! — Nothing but drunkenness — glorious drunkenness — divine poetic drunkenness for ever!”

“Eef you like,” said Alec, with a polite and acquiescent shrug. He raised his glass and drank.

It was four o’clock when they left the place. Arm in arm they reeled out into the street, Starwick holding on to Alec for support and shouting drunkenly:

“Nous sommes des amis! — Nous sommes des amis éternels! Mais oui! Mais oui!”

The whole dark and silent street rang and echoed with his drunken outcry. “Alec et moi — nous sommes des frères-nous sommes des artistes! Nothing shall part us! Non — jamais! Jamais!”

A taxi, which had been waiting in the darkness several doors away, now drove up swiftly and stopped before them at the kerb. Ann and Elinor were inside: Elinor opened the door and spoke gently:

“Frank, get in the taxi now, we’re going home.”

“Mais jamais! Jamais!” Starwick yelled hysterically. “I go nowhere without Alec! — We are brothers — friends — he has a poet’s soul.”

“Frank, don’t be an idiot!” Elinor spoke quietly, but with crisp authority. “You’re drunk; get in the taxi; we’re going home.”

“Mais oui!” he shouted. “Je suis ivre! I am drunk! I will always be drunk — nothing but drunkenness for ever for Alec and me!”

“Listen!” Elinor spoke quietly, pleasantly to the Frenchman. “Won’t you go away, please, and leave him now? He is drunk, he does not know what he is doing; he really must go home now.”

“But, of course, madame,” said Alec courteously, “I go now.” He turned to Starwick and spoke quietly, with his thin, engaging smile: “I s’ink, Frank, eet ees bettaire eef you go home now, non?”

“But no! But no!” cried Starwick passionately. “I will go nowhere without Alec. . . . Alec!” he cried, clutching him with drunken desperation. “You cannot go! You must not go! You cannot leave me!”

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” said Alec, smiling. “Ees eet not bettaire eef we go to-gezzer tomorrow? — I s’ink zen you feel motch bettaire.”

“No! No!” Starwick cried obstinately. “Now! Now! Alec, you cannot leave me! We are brothers, we must tell each other everything. . . . You must show me all you know, all you have seen — you must teach me to smoke opium — take me where the opium-smokers go — Alec! Alec! J’ai la nostalgic pour la boue . . . .”

“Oh, Frank, quit talking like a drunken idiot! Get in the car, we’re going home . . . .”

“But no! But no!” Starwick raved on in his high drunken voice. “Alec and I are going on together — he has promised to take me to the places that he knows — to show me the dark mysteries — the lower depths . . . .”

“Oh, Frank, for God’s sake get in the car; you’re making a damned fool of yourself!”

“— But no! I will not go without Alec — he must come with us — he is going to show me . . . .”

“But I show you, Frank,” said Alec smoothly. “Tonight, non!” He spoke firmly, waved a hand. “Eet ees impossible. I wet ’ere for someone. I must meet, I ‘ave engagement — yes. Tomorrow, eef you like, I meet you ’ere! Tonight, non!” His voice was harsh, sharp with irrevocable refusal. “I cannot. Eet ees impossible.”

By dint of infinite prayers and persuasions, and by Alec’s promises that he would meet him next day............