A Top-Floor Idyl

This is a romance book. I smiled at my friend Gordon, the distinguished painter, lifting up my glass and taking a sip of the table d'hôte claret, which the Widow Camus supplies with her famed sixty-five cent repast. It is, I must acknowledge, a somewhat turbid beverage, faintly harsh to the palate, and yet it may serve as a begetter of pleasant illusions. While drinking it, I can close my eyes, being of an imaginative nature, and permit its flavor to bring back memories of ever-blessed tonnelles by the Seine, redolent of fried gudgeons and mirific omelettes, and felicitous with gay laughter.