uncostly pleasure and excitement of café life which seemed unbelievable and magical to these two young Americans. The dull grey air, which was at once chill and wintry, and yet languorous, filled them with the sense of some powerful, strange, and inhuman excitement that was impending for them.
And the bright gaiety of the colours, the constant flash and play of life about them and along the pavements, the smell and potent intoxication of the cognac, gave them the sensation of a whole world given over without reserve or shame to pleasure. All these elements, together with that incomparable fusion of odours—at once corrupt and sensual, subtle and obscene—which exudes from the very texture of the Paris life—odours which it is impossible to define exactly but which seem in the dull wintry air to be compacted of the smells of costly perfumes, of wine, beer, brandy, and of the acrid and nostalgic fumes of French tobacco, of roasted chestnuts, black French coffee, mysterious liquors of a hundred brilliant and intoxicating colours, and the luxurious flesh of scented women—smote the two young men instantly with the sensual impact of this strange and fascinating world.
But in spite of all the magic of the scene, and the assurance and security which Starwick’s presence always gave to him, the ghost of the old unquiet doubt would not wholly be laid at rest, the ache of the old hunger stirred in Eugene. Why was he here now? Why had he come? The lack of purpose in this present life, the dozing indolence of this existence in which no one worked, in which they sat constantly at tables in a café, and ate and drank and talked, and moved on to sit at other tables, other cafés—and, most of all, the strange dull faces of the Frenchmen, the strange and alien life of this magic city which was so seductive but so unalterably foreign to all that he had ever known—all this had now begun to weigh inexplicably upon a troubled spirit, to revive again the old feelings of naked homelessness, to stir in him the nameless sense of shame and guilt which an American feels at a life of indolence and pleasure, which is part of the very chemistry of his blood, and which he can never root out of him. And feeling the obscure but powerful insistence of these troubled thoughts within his mind, he turned suddenly to Starwick, and without a word of explanation said:
“But do you really feel at home here?”
“What do you mean by’feeling at home’?”
“Well, I mean don’t you ever feel out of place here? Don’t you ever feel as if you didn’t belong to this life—that you are a foreigner?”
