‘Won’t you sit down here?’ he suggested, avoiding my eyes.
And thus I found myself seated outside a cafe, at night, conspicuous for all Montparnasse to see. We never know what may lie in store for us at the next turning of existence.
‘Then I am not much changed, you think?’ he ventured, in an anxious tone.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘You are perhaps a little stouter. That’s all.’
How hard it was to talk! How lamentably self-conscious we were! How unequal to the situation! We did not know what to say.
‘You are far more beautiful than ever you were,’ he said, looking at me for an instant. ‘You are a woman; you were a girl—then.’
The waiter brought another glass and saucer, and a second waiter followed him with a bottle, from which he poured a greenish-yellow liquid into the glass.
‘What will you have?’ Diaz asked me.
‘Nothing, thank you,’ I said quickly.
To sit outside the cafe was already much. It would have been impossible for me to drink there.