Monsieur Carvin bowed.
"For any friend of Louis," he said, "one would do much. But indeed, monsieur, people seem to find my little restaurant interesting, and it is, alas, so very small."
We entered the room almost as he spoke. It was larger than I had expected to find it, and the style of its decorations and general appearance were absolutely different from the café below. The coloring was a little sombre for a French restaurant, and the illuminations a little less vivid. The walls, however, were panelled with what seemed to be a sort of dark mahogany, and on the ceiling was painted a great allegorical picture, the nature of which I could not at first surmise. The guests, of whom the room was almost full, were all well-dressed and apparently of the smart world. The tourist element was lacking. There were a few men there in morning clothes, but these were dressed with the rigid exactness of the Frenchman, who often, from choice, affects this style of toilet. From the first I felt that the place possessed an atmosphere. I could not describe it, but, quite apart from Louis' few words concerning it, I knew that it had a clientèle of its own, and that within its four walls were gathered together people who were in some way different from the butterfly crowd who haunt the night cafés in Paris. Monsieur Carvin himself led us to a small table against the wall, and not far inside the room. The vestiaire relieved us of our coats and hats. A suave maître d'hôtel bent over us with suggestions for supper, and an attendant sommelier waited by his side. Monsieur Carvin waved them away.
"The gentlemen have probably supped," he remarked. "A bottle of the Pommery, Goût Anglais, and some biscuits. Is that right, Louis?"
We both hastened to express our approval. Monsieur Carvin was called by some one at the other end of the room and hurried away. Louis turned to me. There was a curious expression in his eyes.
"You are disappointed?" he asked. "You see nothing here different? It is all the same to you."
"Not in the least," I answered. "For one thing, it seems strange to find a restaurant de luxe up here, when below there is only a café of the worst. Are they of the same management?"
"Up here," he said, "come the masters, and down there the servants. Look around at these people, monsieur. Look around carefully. Tell me whether you do not see something different here from the other places."
I followed Louis' advice. I looked around at the people with an interest which grew rather than abated, and for which I could not at first account. Soon, however, I began to realize that although this was, at first appearance, merely a crowd of fashionably dressed men and women, yet they differed from the ordinary restaurant crowd in that there was something a little out of the common in the faces of nearly every one of them. The loiterers through life seemed absent. These people were relaxing freely enough,—laughing, talking, and making love,—but behind it all there seemed a note of seriousness, an intentness in their faces which seemed to speak of a career, of things to be done in the future, or something accomplished in the past. The woman who sat at the opposite table to me—tall, with yellow hair, and face as pale as alabaster—was a striking personality anywhere. Her blue eyes were deep-set, and she seemed to have made no effort to conceal the dark rings underneath, which only increased their luminosity. A magnificent string of turquoises hung from her bare neck, a curious star shone in her hair. Her dress was of the newest mode. Her voice, languid but elegant, had in it that hidden quality which makes it one of a woman's most attractive gifts. By her side was a great black-moustached giant, a pale-faced man, with little puffs of flesh underneath his eyes, whose dress was a little too perfect and his jewelry a little too obvious.
"Tell me," I asked, "who is that man?"