nterminable catalogue of nothings, while he sat dumb as
a fish, with a mind that smouldered or blazed. He had stood unseen
with a hammer, a poker, a razor in his hand, on tiptoe to do it. A
movement, a rush, one silent rush and it was done! He had revelled in
her murder. He had caressed it, rehearsed it, relished it, had jerked
her head back, and hacked, and listened to her entreaties bubbling
through blood!

And then she died! When he stood by her bed he had wished to taunt
her, but he could not do it. He read in her eyes--I am dying, and in a
little time I shall have vanished like dust on the wind, but you will
still be here, and you will never see me again--He wished to ratify
that, to assure her that it was actually so, to say that he would come
home on the morrow night, and she would not be there, and that he would
return home every night, and she would never be there. But he could
not say it. Somehow the words, although he desired them, would not
come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed
her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands;
and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and
apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any
one before, and never would love any one again. . . .

Every one who passed looked into the Cafe where he sat. Every one who
passed looked at him. There were men with sallow faces and wide black
hats. Some had hair that flapped about them in the wind, and from
their locks one gathered, with some distaste, the spices of Araby.
Some had cravats that fluttered and fell and rose again like banners in
a storm. There were men with severe, spade-shaped, most
responsible-looking beards, and quizzical little eyes which gave the
lie to their hairy sedateness--eyes which had spent long years in
looking sidewards as a woman passed. There were men of every stage of
foppishness--men who had spent so much time on their moustaches that
they had only a little left for their finger-nails, but their
moustaches exonerated them; others who were coated to happiness,
trousered to grotesqueness, and booted to misery. He thought--In this
city the men wear their own coats, but they all wear some one else's
trousers, and their boots are syndicated.

He saw no person who was self-intent. They were all deeply conscious,
not of themselves, but of each other. They were all looking at each
other. They were all looking at him;