“The deuce we have! Then let’s go to Bullier to-night. We both want a touch of gay life. Come! we’ll watch Paris laugh.”
So we climbed the Boul’ Mich’, till at its head in a crescent of light we saw the name of the famous old dance-hall. Threading our way amid the little green tables, past the bowling alley and the bar, we found a place in the side-gallery.
We were looking down on a scene of the maddest gaiety. The great floor was dense with dancers and kaleidoscopic in colouring. In the wildest of spirits five hundred men and girls were capering, shuffling, jigging and contorting their bodies in time to tumultuous music. Some danced limb to limb, others were bent out like a bow; some sidled like a crab, others wriggled like an eel; some walked, some leaped, some slid, some merely kicked sideways: it was dancing in delirium, Bedlam in the ball-room.
And what conflicting colours! Here a girl in lobster pink galloped with another whose costume was like mayonnaise. There a negress in brilliant scarlet with a corsage of silver darted through the crowd like a flame. A hideous negro was dancing with a pretty grisette who with fluffy hair and flushed cheeks looked at him adoringly as he pawed her with his rubber-blue palms. An American girl in shirt waist and bicycle skirt zig-zagged in and out with a dashing Spaniard. A tall, bashful Englishman pranced awkwardly around with a midinette in citron and cerise, while a gentleman from China solemnly gyrated with a mannequin in pistachio and chocolate. Pretty girls nearly all; and where they lacked in looks, full of that sparkling Parisian charm.
“There’s your friend, Monsieur Livwir,” said Anastasia suddenly. Sure enough, there in that maelstrom of merriment I saw Lorrimer dancing with a girl of dazzling prettiness. Presently I caught his eye and after the dance he joined us.
“You haven’t been to see me yet,” I remarked.
“No, been too busy,—working every moment of my time.” Then realising that the present moment rather belied him he shrugged his shoulders.
To tell the truth I have been feeling a little hurt. We sentimentalists are so prone to measure others by our own standards. Our meeting, so interesting to me, had probably never given him another thought. Now I saw that while I was an egoist, Lorrimer was an egotist; but with one of his boyish smiles he banished my resentment.
“Let me introduce you to Rougette,” he said airily; “she’s my model.”
He beckoned to the tall blonde. Rarely have I seen a girl of more distracting prettiness. Her hair was of ashen gold; Parma violets might have borrowed their colour from her eyes; Nice roses might have copied their tint from her cheeks, and her tall figure was of a willowy grace. Her manner had all the winning charm of frank simplicity. She was indeed over pretty, one of those girls who draw eyes like a magnet, so that the poor devil who adores them has little peace.