came and answered me.

I

It was eleven o'clock. Outside it was snowing, and so I remained in
Pigalle's, loath to leave, and killing the time with a book. Pigalle's
was one of those basement eating places in New York's West Thirties, a
comfy, tight, cosy sort of a cellar. An Italian table d'hote, of course,
though not like the usual; it had more character and less popularity.
You seldom saw a blond skin there, the place being unknown to the
night-tramping hordes of avid New Yorkers who crowd into all the
"foreign" places and devour all the foreign food they can find. Mostly
the _habitues_ were French and Italian, gentle, noisy people who did,
in their way, slight damage to the fine arts. By nine-thirty, they were
done eating and gone; almost all the lights were turned out and chairs
were piled up on the tables, out of the way of the early morning mop.
By ten Pigalle and his wife and several others, mostly sculptors, scene
painters and musicians, were gathered beneath the light at the main
table and had begun their nightly game of poker. From then on it was
slim gambling and loud, staccato chatter in French and Italian.

At eleven, then, this night, the cautious door-bell tinkled. Some kind
of a world knocking at mine and wanting to get in, I thought. Some kind
of an adventure out there, demanding to be encountered; some kind of a
soul pounding at the walls of my soul. Every time the doorbell tinkles,
whoever has this Show is setting a new scene. Or, no. The wall opens
and the genie slips through, spreads his rug on the ground and begins
to make new magic before your very eyes. Never a doorbell rang yet, I
thought, that didn't bring a bit of heaven or hell--or mere
purgatory--with it.

At eleven the doorbell tinkled and the fat little
waitress-maid-scrubwoman-second cook, a Lombard wench by the name, the
sweet ineffable name of Philomene, waddled over and opened the door a
tiny space. Pigalle occasionally sold liquor without a license; hence
his caution as to visitors. She let in an odd apparition; with doubts,
I thought; certainly with mutterings and rolling of her black eyes. At
any rate she knew him, whether for well or ill.

The man cast his eyes around, saw that the only open table save the
poker table was the one I held, and came and sat down opposite me. With
a slightly insolent motion he dragged his chair around sidewise, turned
his shoulder to me and stared across the room at a gaudy lithograph of
the g