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Le Palais De Glace.

In the afternoon I accompanied this lady to the Palais de Glace. It was then a very different place from what it is now. There was a motley assembly of Boulevardiers and notorious beauties of the period. Some of these skated and their sport costumes were very striking indeed. Others walked round the crowded promenade and their bright eyes kept glancing first to the right and then to the left. But my friend, I thought, had the most beautiful eyes of all. Their brightness was amazing and most alluring. 

It was fortunate for me that a most unpleasant incident occurred that very evening at the Pavillon Chinois. I was dining with my friend in the crowded restaurant, when towards the end of dinner a tall, dark woman, seated some distance away, suddenly stood up and seizing a "cerafe d'eau" flung it in my direction, It hit my nose and I was rushed to the toilet-room to be treated with cold water. 

My friend had known the women; they had quarrelled and separated. "But why didn't you hit back?" she asked me afterwards. It was hard to make her understand that I had never hit anyone in my life; also that I was ashamed of the row in such a crowded place.