Now it so happened that Mr. Karslake had never before sat at that particular table.

The language spoken at it to-day intrigued Sofia extravagantly.  It was rich in labials, gutturals, and odd sibilances.  She was positive it was not a European tongue, though she thought it might possibly be Russian, because it sounded rather like Russian print looks; it might just as well have been Arabic or Choctaw, for all Sofia could say to the contrary.  But his fluent ease in it impressed her with the notion that young Mr. Karslake might not, after all, be as negligible a person as he looked and as she indifferently had assumed.

She determined to study him more attentively.

It was rather a long confabulation, too, and one that both men seemed to take very seriously—­though its upshot was apparently quite acceptable to both—­and terminated abruptly with Mr. Karslake announcing, in English, with every evidence of satisfaction: 

“Good!  Then that’s settled.”

To this the older man dissented tolerantly.

“Pardon:  nothing is settled; it is proposed, merely.”

“Well,” said Karslake with a little laugh that to Sofia sounded empty, “at all events it ought to be amusing.”

The other lifted one eyebrow and smiled remotely.

“You think so?”

“To be ordering you about, sir?  I should say so!” But his companion wasn’t listening or chose purposely to ignore that accent of respect.

“You are right, my friend,” he said, abstractedly:  “it will be amusing.  But what in life is not?  I fancy that is why most of us go on, because we find the play entertaining in spite of ourselves.  And even when we think of Death ... there’s the possibility that on the other side of the curtain, where the unseen audience sits, whose hisses and applause we never hear ... over there it may be more entertaining still!”

Karslake was inquisitively watching his face.

“You would say that,” he commented, deference and admiration in his voice.  “By all accounts you’ve had a most amusing life.”

“I have found it so.”  The other nodded with glimmering eyes.  “Not always at the time, of course.  But when I look back, especially at my beginnings, at the times that seemed hardest and most intolerable ...”

He was thoughtful for a moment, glancing interestedly round the room.

“It takes one back.”

“What does?”

“This cafe, my friend.”

“To your beginnings, you mean?”

“Yes.  It is very like the cafe at Troyon’s, at this hour especially, when there are so few English about.”

“Troyon’s?”

“A restaurant in Paris.  Famous in its day.  Several years ago—­before the war—­it burned down one night, cremating many memories.  While it stood I hated it, now I miss it; Paris without it is no more the Paris that I knew.”

“Why did you hate it, sir?”

“Because I suffered there.”