la, distinct as the handwriting upon the
wall, stood revealed before her. One had but to _live_ life, not reason
it, and all would be well.

Again and again, the delicate glasses sparkled to waiting lips, and
returned empty to the table. The man lit another cigarette, and its
smoke mingled with the darkness above. In the hands of the waiter the
cooler disappeared, and was returned; a second cork popped as had the
first. The woman's eyes sparkled as brilliantly as the gems upon her
fingers. The languor of the man had passed. With the old action
repeated, the brimming glasses touched across the board, were exchanged
after the foreign fashion, and again were dry. The figure of the man
leaned far over the table. He spoke earnestly, rapidly. Unconscious
motions of his hands added emphasis to his words. Neither he nor she who
listened was smiling now. Instead, there was a look, identical upon
either face, a look somehow strangely familiar to the watcher, one she
had met with before, somewhere--somewhere. Memory flew back on lightning
wings, searched all the paths of her experience, the dim
all-but-forgotten crannies, stopped with pointing finger; and with a tug
at her very being, she looked, and unbelieving looked again. Ah, could
it be possible--could it? Yes, there it was, unmistakable; the same
expression as this before her--there, blazing from the eyes of a group
of strange street-loafers, as she herself, she, Florence Baker, passed
by!

In the shadow the face of the spectator crimsoned, the hot flood burned
at her ears, a tightness like a physical hand gripped at her throat; but
it seemed that her eyes could not leave the figures before her. Not the
alien interest of a watcher at the play, but a more intense, a more
personal meaning, was in her gaze now. Something of vital moment to her
own life was taking place out there so near, and she must see. A
fleeting wonder as to whether her own companion was likewise watching
came to her, but she did not turn to discover. The denouement,
inevitable as death, was approaching, might come if she for an instant
looked away.

The man out there under the electric globe was still talking; the woman,
his companion, still listened. Florence caught herself straining her
ears to hear what he was saying; but to no purpose. She heard only the
repressed murmur of his well-modulated, resonant voice; yet that in
itself was enough. The old song of the sirens was flowing from his lips,
and p