the setting for a few nurses and their charges. The little iron tables were so deserted that they remained merely little iron tables. Of course the boulevards were as always; but after a night or two before the Cafe de la Paix he had enough. Even with fifty thousand people passing in review before him, he was not as amused as he should have been. He sipped his black coffee as drowsily as an old man. In an effort to rouse himself, he resolved to visit the cafes upon Montmartre, which he had outgrown many years ago. That night he climbed the narrow stairs to l'Abbaye. It was exactly as it had been--a square room bounded by long seats before tables. Some two dozen young ladies of various nationalities wandered about the center of the room, trying their best, but with manifest effort, to keep pace to the frenzied music of an orchestra paid to keep frenzied. A half-dozen of the ladies pounced upon Monte as he sat alone, and he gladly turned over to them the wine he purchased as the price of admission. Yvonne, she with the languid Egyptian eyes, tried to rouse the big American. Was it that he was bored? Possibly it was that, Monte admitted. Then another bottle of wine was the proper thing. So he ordered another bottle, and to the toast Yvonne proposed, raised his glass. But the wine did him no good, and the music did him no good, and Yvonne did him no good. The place had gone flat. Whatever he needed, it was nothing l'Abbaye had to offer. Covington went out into the night again, and, though the music from a dozen other cafes called him to come in and forget, he continued down the hill to the boulevard, deaf to the gay entreaties of the whole city. It was clear that he was out of tune with Paris. As he came into the Place de l'Opera he ran into the crowd pouring from the big gray opera house, an eager, voluble crowd that jostled him about as if he were an intruder. They had been warmed by fine music and stirred by the great passions of this mimic world, so that the women clung more tightly to the arms of their escorts. Covington, who had fallen back a little to watch them pass, felt strangely isolated. They hurried on without seeing him, as if he were merely some spectral bystander. Yet the significant fact was not that a thousand strangers should pass him without being aware of his presence, but that he himself should notice their indifference. It was not like him. Ordinarily it was exactly what he would desire. But to-night he was in an unusual mood--a mood that was the culmination of a restlessness covering an entire month. But what the deuce was the name and cause of it? He could no longer attribute it to the fact that he had gone stale physically, because he had now had a rest of several weeks. It was not that he was bored; those who are bored never stop to ask themselves why they are bored or they would not be bored. It was not that he was homesick, because, strictly speaking, he had no home. A home seems to