The Equinox (Volume I, Number VII)

THE EQUINOX heard the Sirens He was fortunately tied to the mast of his ignorance of French and his fear of asking anybody such a very peculiar question, or he would certainly have discovered and visited the Moulin Rouge. As it was, Joan of Arc was very much more than was good for him. He stared, fascinated as bya basilisk, his eyes starting further and further from his head as his moral sense dragged his body backwards along the Rue de Rivoli. By this means he cannoned into a worthy Frenchman (who refused to take him seriously) and so was shocked into himself. He pulled out his watch. Only an hour and a half to catch his train. justas he was beginning to enjoy himself, too. What a shame! He couldn’t even send a telegram without letting somebody know where he was—and at home they supposed him to be visiting a business acquaintance in Shropshire. I'll have a mementum, thought he, if I die for it. I'll—I don’t care. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb— I‘ll go the whole hog. I know there‘s shops about here. So, turning,in his excitement and determination, he saw —when you invoke the devil he is usually half—way to you—a shop window full of photographs of the pictures and sculptures of the Louvre He looked up and down the street—the sight of a top hat might have saved him even at the eleventh houri But no! nothing that looked in the least like an Englishman, even to his overheated fear of discovery. He peered and dodged about for a little like a man stalking dangerous game, 52