’Young days at present.  Ah, young days!’....

“Waiter, a Benedictine!” And hearing her laugh, O his old heart ached.  ‘No one,’ he thought, ’will ever laugh like that for me again!’....  “Here, waiter, how’s this?  You’ve charged me for an ice!” But when the waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror, and saw them clink their glasses filled with golden bubbling wine, and he thought:  ’Wish you good luck!  For a flash of those teeth, my dear, I’d give——­’

But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table—­yellow and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry.  He saw them suddenly as they were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill of gravy on the cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten.  Wheezing and coughing, ‘This place is not what it was,’ he thought; ‘I shan’t come here again!’

He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the mirror, and met their eyes resting on himself.  In them he read the careless pity of the young for the old.  His eyes answered the reflection of their eyes, ‘Wait, wait!  It is young days yet!  I wish you no harm, my dears!’ and limping-for one of his legs was lame—­he went away.

But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the light in their eyes grew brighter.  For who was there now in the room to mind?  Not a living soul!  Only a tall, dark young waiter, a little cross-eyed, who was in consumption; only the little wine-waiter, with a pallid face, and a look as if he suffered.  And the whole world seemed of the colour of the wine they had been drinking; but they talked of indifferent things, and only their eyes, bemused and shining, really spoke.  The dark young waiter stood apart, unmoving, and his cross-eyed glance, fixed on her shoulders, had all unconsciously the longing of a saint in some holy picture.  Unseen, behind the serving screen, the little wine-waiter poured out and drank a glass from a derelict bottle.  Through a chink of the red blinds an eye peered in from the chill outside, staring and curious, till its owner passed on in the cold.

It was long after nine when they rose.  The dark young waiter laid her cloak upon her with adoring hands.  She looked back at him, and in her eyes was an infinite indulgence.  ‘God knows,’ she seemed to say, ’if I could make you happy as well, I would.  Why should one suffer?  Life is strong and good!’

The young waiter’s cross-eyed glance fell before her, and he bowed above the money in his hand.  Quickly before them the little wine-waiter hurried to the door, his suffering face screwed into one long smile.

“Good-night, madam; good-night, sir.  Thank you very much!”

And he, too, remained bowed over his hand, and his smile relaxed.

But in the cab George’s arm stole round her underneath the cloak, and they were borne on in the stream of hurrying hansoms, carrying couples like themselves, cut off from all but each other’s eyes, from all but each other’s touch; and with their eyes turned in the half-dark they spoke together in low tones.