What ensued was lost in a cackle of French interspersed with high-pitched laughter. The friend sat down for a few minutes, joked with the "Captain," drank the remainder of his cocktail, and patted him familiarly on the cheek. Esther stole a glance at the beautiful blonde woman and found her calm, gazing across the room with narrowed eyes and an expression of thought. At last she got out her mirror and made herself up, as delicately as a cat washes its face, little touches here and there.
"Going?"
"Yes, I shall see if the doctor will give me a piqûre. I am very tired."
"I thought you had them on Mondays and Thursdays."
"Yes, but sometimes I have an extra one. They pick me up."
"Ah, les piqûres! Je suis, très bien, ça!"
In two minutes all three had risen and disappeared into the crowd about the broad stairs that led into the room. Left behind, Esther felt a sense of flatness and anti-climax. She had begun to take such a keen interest in the blonde woman and her young Englishman, that the thought of not finding out more about them filled her with disappointment. Still, they were patients of the doctor she was perhaps going to work for; there was a chance that she might learn something more. She sat turning over in her mind all she had overheard. Though not particularly worldly wise, she was no fool, and while she was not quite clear about the situation of these two and their relations to each other, the various implications they had let fall were not entirely lost on her.
She had not seen the last of the Captain, as it happened. Five minutes later she caught sight of him sauntering about near the entrance with a vacant eye and a restless manner. Simultaneously there approached her corner a short, enormously fat, overdressed woman, barging aggressively ahead towards the vacant table, her huge bosom well in advance like the prow of a ship. As the swarthy face drew nearer she saw that it and the bosom belonged to the Spanish woman of the Carlton—no doubt the very one who was trying to entice the young man to the Argentine. Yes, and there was the daughter coming in her wake, a clumsily built girl in pink satin, her swart arms bare to the shoulder. The elder woman attacked the waiter almost bodily, and in hard, guttural French commanded him to move the table closer to the dancing floor—an operation causing considerable annoyance to the surrounding guests. For a moment the Spaniard pressed her hulk so close to Esther that the latter was nearly choked with the fumes of her chypre. Then suddenly there was a shriek of delight. The lady, as Esther expressed it to herself, had discovered her "boy friend."
"What will be the end of it?" wondered Esther as she paid her bill and rose to go. "Which of these two women is going to get her way?"
With amusement she watched the stolid daughter led away by a "professional" to dance the tango, leaving her mother in eager conversation with the Englishman, tapping his arm with her pudgy hand, her black eyes like burnt holes in the whiteness of her powdered face. Then she threaded her way out of the restaurant and through the main entrance of the Casino.