fantasies, enduing them with histories and environments as far removed from
fact as the drab dreams of the realists are from the picturesque
commonplaces of everyday.

And there were others who came once and never again, but whom she never
forgot. But for some of these last, indeed, she would never have remembered
some of the former. The brown-eyed youngster with the sentimental
expression and the funny little moustache, for example, lurked in the ruck
a long time before the one and only visit of a bird of passage dignified
him in the sight of the girl on the high stool.

On the occasion of his first appearance (but that was long ago, Sofia
couldn't remember how long) the slender young man with the soulful eyes and
the insignificant moustache had commended himself to her somewhat derisive
attention by seeming uncommonly exquisite for that atmosphere.

The Cafe des Exiles was little haunted by the world of fashion; its diner a
prix fixe (2/6), although excellent, surprisingly well done for the money,
did not much seduce the clientele of the Carlton and the Ritz. Now and
again its remoteness, promising freedom from embarrassing encounters save
through unlikely mischance, would bring it the custom of a clandestine
couple from the West End, who would for a time make it an almost daily
rendezvous, meeting nervously, sitting if possible in the most shadowy
corner, the farthest from the door, and holding hands when they mistakenly
assumed that nobody was looking--until the affair languished or some
contretemps frightened them away.

Aside from such visitations, however, the great world coldly passed the
cafe by; although it couldn't complain for lack of patronage, and in fact
prospered exceedingly if without ostentation on the half-crowns of loyal
Soho and more fickle suburbia.

The Sohobohemian on its native heath and the City clerk on the loose,
however, were not prone to such vestments as young Mr. Karslake affected.
It wasn't that he overdressed; even the ribald would have hesitated to
libel him with the name of a "nut"--which is Cockney for what the United
States knows as a "fancy (or swell) dresser"; it was simply that he was
always irreproachably turned out, whatever the form of dress he thought
appropriate to the time of day; and that his wardrobe was so complete and
varied that he seldom appeared twice in the same suit of clothes--except,
of course, after nightfall; though his visits to the Cafe des Exiles for
di