He didn’t look at the table behind the door. His gaze was far off. I could see it scanning the backs of the hangers across the bar. Then it went over the tables one by one, traveling nearer and nearer.
Just before the dim eyes reached me I said: “Hello, Lovey! Come and sit down. What’ll you have to drink?”
There seemed to be an interval between hearing my voice and actually seeing me—an interval during which a frosty, unnatural color, as if snow were suddenly to take fire, flared in his waxlike cheek. But he came to the table and dropped into a round-backed chair.
“Oh, Slim!”
Leaning on the table, he covered his face with his hand.
I tried putting up a bluff. “What’s the matter, Lovey? Haven’t got a headache, have you?”
He raised those pitiful, dead blue eyes. “No, but I’ve got a ’eartache, Slim—a ’eartache I won’t never get over.”
“Why, why—” I began to rally him.
“It’s just what I was afeared of—for days and days I’ve been afeared of it. Been a-watchin’ of you, I ’ave.”