"How jolly these pigs of English always look!"
As I was leaving, a woman ran down the gravel walk after me, and slipped her arm through mine. I turned and paused. She was very small, pretty, and Parisian from her black eyebrows, cocked like one of her own circumflex accents, to her patent shoes under her silk skirt.
"What do you want" I said, in her own tongue, of course. "Money?"
"We don't put it like that!" she said, thrusting out her red lips.
"Well, it comes to that in the end generally," I said, whirling my cane round in my hand and smiling." It will save you trouble if you take it now," and I offered her two five-franc pieces and withdrew my arm. "Go to the bar and drink my health with it!" She took the money, but still looked at me.
"Give me a kiss!" she said in a low tone, so low that I did not catch the last word.
"Give you what" I asked.
She stamped her foot.
"Un baiser!" she said, with a little French scream. "Embrasse moi! Stupide!"
I laughed slightly as I looked down upon her. It seemed so ludicrous, the proposition, just then to me. I had hardly lived the life I had in Paris for the last thirty months, to now, in the moment of success and freedom, mar its remembrance by even so much as a chance kiss to a cafe chantant girl.