corner here yesterday morning?' asks the patronne, and I have to think back to the dawn before.
"'She was short, thick, black, with wildly disordered hair, rouge-daubed cheeks, a dirty blouse, stubby fingers, magnificent teeth. She was drinking little glasses of rum, and reminded one of a gay, hearty murderess. She was thirty-seven and had just been beaten by a boy of eighteen whom she seduced five years ago. She showed me the bruises and told me how brutal he was—and laughed, a wickedly infectious laugh. She said life was a long series of deceptions. Her young lover forced her to give him money, and spent it on others, and yet she couldn't do without him; and she laughed, and I laughed. She said at that rate her lover would end by stabbing her, or she would stab him, and we laughed and laughed, until the tears came.'
"'Yes,' I replied, 'I remember her.'
"'Ben, mon petit, she's desperately in love with you. She came back here last night with diamonds in her ears, to find you. She says she can't do without you. She showed me a roll of hundred-franc notes with which she proposes to tempt you. She was in a terrible state.'
"'Did she laugh when she confessed herself?'
"'Laugh! She was filled with nine thousand green devils, and each one was shrieking with laughter.'"
"Night café, rue St. Marc, February 1, 1923.
"After an absence of months I stopped in to listen to the patronne's latest peripéties. On my last visit Suzy, in the name of sweet respectability, 'borrowed' twenty francs. She told me she was going to Rouen to attend the marriage of her young sister and was 'making economies' in order to put up a good front before the family.
"Heavens knows what Suzy has done in the meantime, but the patronne assures me that the agents broke
