em.
There was nothing more to say.

So we said nothing more, and the woman moved away silently, as if to
funeral music, to prepare for her journey to Russia. I--went down to
luncheon.

One always does go down to luncheon while one is still inclined to keep
up appearances before oneself; but the restaurant was large and terribly
magnificent, with a violent rose-coloured carpet, and curtains which
made me, in my frightened pallor, with my pale yellow hair and my gray
travelling dress, feel like a poor little underground celery-stalk flung
into a sunlit strawberry-bed, amid a great humming of bees.

The vast rosy sea was thickly dotted with many small table-islands that
glittered appetizingly with silver and glass; but I could not have
afforded to acknowledge an appetite even if I'd had one.

My conversation with the Russian woman had made me rather late. Most of
the islands were inhabited, and as I was piloted past them by a haughty
head waiter I heard people talking about golf, tennis, croquet, bridge,
reminding me that I was in a place devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.

The most desirable islands were next the windows, therefore the one at
which I dropped anchor (for I'd changed from a celery-stalk into a
little boat now) was exactly in the middle of the room, with no view
save of faces and backs of heads.

One of the faces was that of the lady who had gone up with me in the
lift; and now and then, from across the distance that separated us, I
saw her glance at me. She sat alone at a table that had beautiful roses
on it, and she read a book as she ate.

One ordered here _a la carte_: there was no _dejeuner a prix fixe_; and
it took courage to tell a waiter who looked like a weary young duke that
I would have _consomme_ and bread, with nothing, no, _nothing_ to
follow.

Oh! the look he gave me, as if I had annexed the table under false
pretences!

Suddenly the chorus of an American song ran with mocking echoes through
my brain. I had heard Pamela sing it at the Convent:

The waiter roared it through the hall:
"We don't give bread with _one_ fish-ball!
We-don't-_give_-bread with one fish-_ba-a-ll_!"

I half expected some such crushing protest, and it was only when the
weary duke had turned his back, presumably to execute my order, that I
sank into my chair with a sigh of relief after strain.

Just at that moment I met the eye of the lady of the lift, and when the
waiter reappeared with a smal