IN America, girl can meet boy almost anywhere, and it can be delightful. In Europe before the old war, class distinctions imposed a barrier no one could pass at will. After the war many of the barriers still remained; weaker, perhaps, with gaps in them, but they were still there.

When the war ended I had known only two women I could recall with anything but disgust. One was my mother and the other was Julča. It was an abnormal situation for any young man, but I did not realize it then. During the war I had fallen into the same kind of experiences most soldiers go through. Perhaps I was a personable young officer; I don’t know. They might have been the same under any circumstances.

The wife of one of my colonels invited me to their home for tea. When I arrived, shy and ill at ease, I found her alone, dressed in a revealing negligee. The nurtured ideals of my childhood were shaken at the notion of a colonel’s wife considering for an instant—as she obviously did—an intimate relationship with a junior officer. And then there was the Christmas package handed to me when I was in hospital. It contained a note from the unknown sender. Because I found the handwriting interesting, I wrote to thank her, after which we corresponded for a month or so. The day after I returned to barracks the owner of the handwriting appeared with her suitcase, come to stay with me. Such visitors were usually welcome in the officers’ wing of the barracks of those days. She was at least a dozen years my senior and the first thing she did was pull from her purse a picture of her little boy. She wanted him to be a cadet when he grew up and she thought it would be fine to be the mistress of a man who might one day be her son’s senior officer. I sent her away as unceremoniously as she had come because she had profaned a relationship more sacred in my eyes than marriage.

Back in Prague I might have found my way into the home of a number of prominent families through my connection with the bank, but this kind of social life held no appeal for me. These young bourgeois girls, I said to myself, were snobbish, they were tame. At this moment they offered nothing I wanted. If they knew the story of my life they would consider it merely unfortunate, without any skill in guessing at my psychological problems. They would never have been able to understand my mother, and of course they would not recognize the more subtle effects of the war on our generation.

It was natural, therefore, that the first girls I became fond of were the ones whose background resembled my own. The entertainers of the night clubs were often splendid artists; they were never cheap performers. But they had no more status in society than I did. They, too, had known what hunger was, and they had survived by pitting their wits against the world. Like Julča, they were warm, generous and affectionate. They were not intelligent and they were often confused, but we understood each other completely.

Throughout my life there has rested deep within me an intense aversion to being thought a nuisance. Always I will leave a party or an engagement early, sometimes losing many pleasurable hours, rather than run the risk of being wished out of the way. Here in the night clubs I was frankly adored by the girls who entertained us because I understood equally well their tragedies and their jokes. I neither used them thoughtlessly as men of greater wealth were in the habit of doing, nor tried to pretend I was better than they. I preferred having them make me a tin god in poor surroundings, in spite of the perishable nature of such metal, to the role of outsider in the homes of Prague society. Nothing gave me greater amusement, or so I told myself repeatedly, than to be whispered about and pointed out as a notable roué by society girls who came to the cabarets occasionally with their families.

It was an extremely limited world, but while I lived in it, it was all mine.

One warm week in May, 1922, a new show opened at the Alhambra. Aloof from the crowds at the tables around the dance floor, we sat watching as the new acts went on. The opening acrobats and comic teams bored us, so Chedeville and I became absorbed in a discussion far removed from our surroundings. We turned around only when Kolovrat sighed audibly to draw our attention to the next number.

It was a solo ballet, a difficult act to put over in a city where the simplicity of national dances was so much more popular. From where we sat we were unable to see the dancer’s face clearly on the scarcely-lighted stage. She was new to Prague and the others decided she was good. I could see nothing remarkable about the dance and said so. Maybe she could be good, but nothing is successful out of its proper setting. A classical Greek dance looked no better in this night club than the Parthenon does when transposed to a city bank building in London or New York. I went back to our discussion.

A little later she slipped onto a stool at the far end of the bar. She had thrown a coat over her dancing costume and her hair was still moist around her temples. She was different from the usual run of dancers to whom we were accustomed, a tiny girl, much smaller than she had seemed dancing on her toes on the stage. Most of our entertainers were lusty, full-limbed blondes or warm-blooded titians. Her fragility piqued the curiosity of the men with me, a reaction at least true to human nature everywhere, and it captured my interest, too.

We drifted over to the long bar and sat beside her. The barman set up our drinks. Then Kolovrat spoke to her. He complimented her on her dance in his own easy way. She looked at him in the mirror over the bar and did not move or speak. Then Chedeville got to work on the other side. He leaned over the bar in her direction and gave her one of his most devastating smiles. It failed, too.

So far I had taken no part in this game. Some men can try to pick up a girl without success and think nothing of it. To me, there is no letdown worse. For the moment I preferred to be out of it.

The barman set her up with a glass of orange juice. The others were confident the girl would soon learn who we were and be eager to make amends by being friendly. She must be very green not to know anyway, for nearly all new actresses in Prague had heard of us through the backstage grapevine before the curtains parted for the first time on their act. But something told me this girl was not entirely green and that she simply did not want to be picked up. I caught the barman’s eyes. He had the same idea.

Suddenly the girl said, “This is a public bar, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, grinning.

“Then you ought to clean it off.”

He stared at her and then catching her point, grinned again.

She slipped off the stool, looked right at us, and went off to her dressing room. I realized then that the scene was not funny at all; it was poignant—a very little girl, three habitués annoying her, orange juice at the bar, and all in a strange city. I was not proud of us.

When she had gone the barman made a comic face at us. “Never mind, you’ll soften her up in time.”

“Who is she?” Kolovrat said.

The barman thought a minute. “Rée Bertin. From Vienna.”

“She looks just a kid,” Chedeville said.

“Eighteen,” the barman replied. “That’s old enough.”

It was old enough for her to know her own mind, anyway. Each night after her act she came to the bar for a soft drink, then disappeared immediately to dress. She never returned to the tables of patrons later, as the other entertainers did. She talked to the barman and that was all. Because we found we could make no impression on her, she began to seem overweeningly desirable. With my own pride stung, however indirectly because I had never spoken to her myself, I became unreasonable and decided to do something about it.

On the fourth or fifth night of her two-weeks’ engagement I managed to sit near the end of the bar where she always perched on a stool much too high for her small, hard legs. I opened a discussion with the other three which I hoped would keep them occupied for some time and then I withdrew while they tore the subject to pieces. When Rée Bertin arrived they scarcely noticed her and I took my chance. As soon as she had ordered her drink and the barman had turned to prepare it, I raised my voice to attract his attention. “Járo,” I said. “Tell the manager I want a word with him when he comes around tonight. His show is falling off this week. It’s too pure and artistic. Nobody wants to watch toe dancers any more.”

I looked straight at the barman’s back as I spoke, but I could see her from the corner of my eye in the mirror. Her body had become rigid. “What’s wrong with my dance?” she said, turning on the stool to face me. Her gamin eyes were blue with fear.

I wanted to tell her quickly there was nothing wrong with her dance; it was beautiful and all of us were completely crazy about it and about her. I couldn’t bear to look into the fright in her eyes. She was such a kid and this was probably her first solo job. Instead I shrugged my shoulders and continued to watch her in the glass without turning. “It would give me great pleasure to tell you,” I said casually. “But these stools are uncomfortable. A bar is hardly the place to discuss such a subject.”

She was on her guard. “What do you know about dancing?” she said.

I shrugged again. “Nothing. But I could certainly tell you how to improve yours.” I turned then and looked directly into her saucy little face. Its defenses were all gone. I didn’t like what I was saying and I didn’t like myself for saying it, but I had accomplished what my companions had been unable to do with their flattery, and I had to go on as I had begun. They were listening intently now. “I have a table in the Chinese Pavilion,” I said. “Go and change and meet me there and I’ll give you all the professional advice you need.”

She continued to look at me with her abnormally large eyes, her short nose tilted up and the perspiration making black ringlets around her face. Then without answering she slipped off her stool and disappeared.

The other three mocked me when she had gone. They thought it a fine joke, and asked me what I’d say if she kept the appointment. I ordered drinks and evaded their teasing and then left them to make my way to the smaller room. In twenty minutes she joined me, her hair combed now away from her face, her nose freshly powdered and her street dress making her look somewhat less childish.

We were both uncomfortable as I fought desperately in my mind to think of something to say while she waited to let me make the first move. I had read nothing about dancing and knew nothing about it except what I had picked up through overheard conversations in the cabarets. I thought I knew a graceful performance from a poor one, but how could I tell Rée Bertin she was good and yet not good enough? I could think of no generalized comments that would make sense to her.

She refused anything stronger than fruit juice when the waiter came for our order. After he had gone she turned to watch the dance floor and I watched her. She had an adorable face. Somehow I must take the fear out of her eyes, kiss the pert mouth, do something immediate to make her laugh and be happy.

The show was over and the orchestra was playing one of the popular songs of the moment. The music was as intoxicating as champagne and the whole room was drunk with it. The sound of laughter rose over the shuffling of feet as the dancers returned to their tables. Voluptuous bodies of Italians, Rumanians, courtesans from Warsaw, and Hungarian dancers from Budapest were pressed close by their partners as they sang the words of the song.

My girl is a gypsy, and gypsies are sweet, Not bashful or coy, but ready to tease, Her kisses are warm, her kisses are straight, She loves and is not afraid. My girl is a gypsy, and gypsies are sweet.

The girl beside me was crying softly, her face turned away as she fumbled in a pocket for her handkerchief. I watched her for a moment as she dabbed at her eyes, feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself. I picked up the small, strong-fingered hand lying in her lap and enclosed it in my own fist, and then I began to talk. I told her there was nothing wrong with the way she danced. She was lovely and she had great talent. All I wanted for her was a better opportunity to show what she could really do, a better spot on the program, different music to bring out her peculiarly vivid charm. She wasn’t like most dancers. She mustn’t try to be like even the best of the others. She must be as different as her personality was unusual. She must attempt new forms of expression in her dancing that would enhance her extreme type of beauty.

For instance . . . if she could get a stage electrician to experiment with her on a new kind of lighting effect she might work out a means of projecting herself far beyond the limits of the ordinary stage. She was tiny, but she needn’t let her lack of size dwarf the volume of her charm. Ideas began to form in the wake of my words and now I could scarcely get them out fast enough.

“Look,” I said, dropping her hand back into her lap in order to use both of mine to outline what I meant. “Let’s get a monotone screen for your backdrop. None of these fancy scenes, just a plain screen. And then let’s have the lights thrown against you as you dance in such a way that your whole body is projected in a dancing shadow against the backdrop.” My hands tried to indicate what I wanted to say. “With its enlarged movements and blurred patterns it will be like a counterpart of your own dance. And the color effects can be blended the same way.”

Her eyes were shining as I finished and her body was moving in a nervous tension as she followed my descriptions. We forgot everything else in the room as we became absorbed in expanding these ideas. Sometimes she would laugh spontaneously as a child laughs from unaffected delight, and again she would grow arch as she thought of the possibilities of such a departure from routine and its probable effect upon her career. I had long ago forgotten my three companions who were waiting to know how I had progressed with my ruse. I had also forgotten that my chief impulse in the beginning had been to succeed where the others had failed.

Night after night we met as soon as Rée’s number was over. I was unreservedly in love for the first time in my life and she was in love with me. It was a heedless passion for both of us because we knew it could have no logical conclusion but separation. Yet we accepted these weeks together without question. We were surprisingly alike in our natures as well as in our background. She had come through poverty and loneliness to make her way as a dancer, and her disdain for night club habitués who threw their money away carelessly was too intense to permit her to accept favors from any of them. She continued to be impertinent and to tease me as no one else had ever been permitted to do, but I adored these qualities as evidences of her independent spirit.

On Sundays we got entirely away from the atmosphere of the night clubs. It was May and the city was sweet with the odor of lilacs and young leaves and fruit blossoms. There is no season of the year when Prague is ugly, but the months of spring in the valley of the Vltava are indescribably beautiful. The Hradčany rises through terraced veils of green and all over the face of Malá Strana the roofs of very old houses can be seen in tiers, each wrapped in terraced layers of trees and gardens. Most of them have been there for a long time, their gray stone walls and red-tiled roofs reaching from the river to the hem of the great buildings at the summit. As the sun moves across the city from dawn to dusk the colors on the Hradčany change from orange gold to mauve and purple, and the sweet smell of the gardens and orchards moves along the river on the evening breeze.

Of all the parks and lovely walks in and around Prague, we liked the Kinský Gardens best. They were maintained by the city now for the use of the public, but their heavily wooded slopes and sheltered gardens had not been changed from the days when they had been the private estate of Count Kinský. As we came through the woods on one slope of the hill we could see the city spread out below and the Vltava like a beige ribbon of light sweeping in generous curves under its interlacing bridges, the Staré Město beyond its far bank a flattened pattern of tiled roofs and flecks of market squares.

And then we would wander on, hand in hand through warm sunny Sundays, talking as neither of us had talked to another living soul in our lives, telling our dreams and our hopes and our small vanities, stopping to embrace in the shadow of the woods and then coming out into the sun again. It was warm on our faces and relaxing to our mood. We could hear the bells of the Loretto Church in the shadow of the Capuchin monastery as they rang the hour, their sound echoing through green domes and onion-shaped pinnacles on the crown of the hill. The spires of St. George’s Church thrust their slim spears into the sky, almost out of sight in the bright light, and the city below was weighted with a cloying intricacy of baroque design, capped by copper domes.

Nowhere was Prague a place of splashing color. With the retiring sun warming its westerly windows, it seemed for a brief hour to be a place entirely of mauve and gold. From the terraces of the Malá Strana fanning out below came the heavy fragrance of old shrubs and well-tended flower gardens. Purple walls and golden windowpanes. Blossoms of yellow and blossoms of mauve. Shadows and light. The sound of the city rolled up from the slow-moving Vltava, like the theme of our two lives, combined for this short space of time into one. Merry, cautious, stubborn and sad.

Through Rée I experienced for the first time the flowering of a creative idea into tangible expression. I knew at last the meaning of complete satisfaction in my whole being. She translated my suggestions into a new dance, we worked it out together to an arrangement of one movement of a Tchaikovsky symphony, and after she had rehearsed it until she was nearly exhausted, we put it on for the manager of the Alhambra. He was sufficiently impressed to give Rée a second month’s engagement with top billing in the new show, and her dance became the sensation of Prague night life for a little while.

During these weeks I dreamed long dreams of becoming an artist myself. The excitement of creation had gone to my head. One day I thought I would be a choreographer, another day I would be a composer, again I decided to take up painting and after that I thought about writing plays. I was still young enough to believe that I had only to want enough of life to be able to turn it to my own inner needs. But when I told Rée my plans she would laugh and tease me, knowing my nature well. For in another part of my mind was the persistent need to be practical, whatever else I might do.

I saw very little of Mother these days. I got home long after she had gone to bed and when she served my breakfast in the mornings I was seldom in a mood to give her much company. She asked for no explanation of my absence and her loving eyes never altered when they rested on me, for she had long before determined and told me repeatedly that I must do as I considered best with my life. The expanding capital of Prague was still a small town in some respects, however, and someone must have told Mother of the great romance known to everyone who frequented the night clubs. One Sunday morning she tried to tell me in her sweet, quiet voice that she was ready to respect and love whoever I might bring to her as my future wife. I could only kiss her hand and explain that I had no thought of marrying anyone now. When I did, she would know. She smoothed the hair on my temples as I leaned over her, and that was the last mention she made of a subject which must have occupied a good deal of her mind.

At the end of two months Rée left to keep other engagements. When she tried to thank me for the inspiration I had given her, for the new ideas in her work, for encouragement that would surely make her a finished artist, I stopped her words with a kiss. For a little while I had made her a queen in the night club world of my friends. Agents whose business it was to observe audience reactions had given her long contracts in other cities as a result. But I knew the encouragement and inspiration had been equally shared.

The new dance I had taught her won an ovation for her in the Winter Garden in Berlin. Paris, Cairo, Brussels and Madrid followed with their acclaim. She wrote to me every week for several months and I answered with letters many pages long. Then her letters ceased. Sometimes one of the girls in a new show would address me by name and repeat a message she had promised to bring from Rée when they had played on the same program in Budapest or Stockholm. I knew this was her way of telling me that she had not forgotten.

The image of her pert little face remained in my heart. I found that I was constantly hunting for it whenever the curtain went up on a new show. Sometimes through the fumes of cigarette smoke and alcohol I would think I saw her sitting across the room at another table, and I would seek out every one of these girls who reminded me of Rée, trying to forget her in new conquests. But I never found anyone else who needed me as she had done, who could accept the impression of my creative ability and translate it through her own art.

The wheels began to run faster, I drank more and slept less, and my appetite for this life became insatiable. I had become celebrated as a connoisseur of beautiful women, but no one knew better than I the limits of such fame. I was compelled to try them all, one after another, because I was always searching for another Rée. I was the soldier who had never expected to survive, catching up on time.