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