"Women, or a woman?"
"Two women."
"Two women at once?"
"Yes."
"What was the trick?"
The two young men were sitting outside a café on the Boulevards, and drinking liquors mixed with water, those aperients which look like infusions of all the shades in a box of water-colors. They were nearly the same age, twenty-five to thirty. One was dark and the other fair, and they had the same semi-elegant look of stock-jobbers, of men who go to the Stock Exchange, and into drawing-rooms, who are to be seen everywhere, who live everywhere, and love everywhere. The dark one continued.
"I have told you of my connection with that little woman, a tradesman's wife, whom I met on the beach at Dieppe?"
"Yes."
"My dear fellow, you know what it is. I had a mistress in Paris, whom I loved dearly; an old friend, a good friend, and it has grown into a habit, in fact, and I value it very much."
"Your habit."