"Very well," he said, "I will stay in the bar. You can't turn me out of there, can you?"
Monsieur Albert was evasive. He desired Monsieur Duncombe to be amused, and the people who remained in the bar—well, it was not possible to get rid of them, but they were not fitting company for him.
"There is the Café Mazarin," he added confidentially, "a few steps only from here—a most amusing place. The most wonderful ladies there, too, very chic, and crowded every night! Monsieur should really try it. The commissionaire would direct him—a few yards only."
"Much obliged to you," Duncombe answered, turning on his heel. "I may look in there presently."
He seated himself at a small round table and ordered a drink. The people here were of a slightly different class from those who had the entrée to the supper-room and were mostly crowded round the bar itself. At a small desk within a few feet of him a middle-aged woman with a cold, hard face sat with a book of account before her and a pile of bills. There was something almost Sphynx-like about her appearance. She never spoke. Her expression never changed. Once their eyes met. She looked at him steadfastly, but said nothing. The girl behind the bar also took note of him. She was very tall and slim, absolutely colorless, and with coils of fair hair drawn tightly back from her forehead. She was never without a cigarette, lighting a fresh one always from its predecessor, talking all the while unceasingly, but without the slightest change of expression. Once she waved the men and girls who stood talking to her on one side, and Duncombe fancied that it was because she desired a better view of him.
Suddenly he was startled by a voice close at hand. He looked up. The woman at the desk was speaking to him.
"Monsieur would be well advised," she said, "if he departed."
Duncombe looked at her in amazement. She was writing rapidly in her book, and her eyes were fixed upon her work. If he had not actually heard her, it would have been hard to believe that she had spoken.
"But why, Madame?" he asked. "Why should I go? I am in no one's way. I can pay for what I have."
She dipped her pen in the ink.