at once and all saying things which were difficult to seize on the wing, quite often witty, always sophisticated, sometimes obscene. As he looked about him, beyond the knowing, tired faces, at the bepainted and bescribbled walls, at the flame-like gray-haired woman dancing a tango with Vaudreuil, at the proud American negroes blowing into saxophones, at all the acutely intelligent dregs and caricatures of people who came and went, he caught little glimpses of himself that alternately excited and shocked him. My long lost soul, he reflected, is flitting about somewhere in this room, either in search of a light or an exit.
At three o'clock he arrived at his door in the rue Truffaut, his portfolio still under his arm. It was already the second day of the famous schedule, and already the schedule was shot to pieces. The only item now to be observed was a lunch appointment.
As he got into bed his mind traced a wide circle back to the events of the afternoon, and rested on the life class.
Their smoothness is nice, he was thinking, and their softness and whiteness. But parts of them are quite ugly.
