"I know!" he said excitedly; "I know—the type of woman who never breaks a commandment because she daren't, yet never earns a beatitude because she can't; but, my God, if this isn't true—"
Then the other began his reply—
"My dear fellow—should I come and—"
She heard no more. A renewed deafening clatter of plates from the grill drowned the remainder of his sentence.
"There's a little tragedy behind us," said the woman, leaning forward, speaking under her breath to one of her companions. They all turned and gazed in the direction of the table. Then the two men stood up. One of them picked up the bill.
"Pay at the desk, please, sir," said the waiter obsequiously.
He half followed them down the room. They had forgotten to tip him. It was quite obvious that they forgot. Yet his face was a study in the mingling of disappointment and contempt. He stood there looking after them; then he chucked up his head in disgust, and catching the eye of some distant waiter, he made a sign of a nought with his fingers, and looked up at the ceiling.
As they passed the woman's table, she heard one of them say—
"There's not a straight woman in the whole of that damned set—not one!" Then they passed out of hearing.
"I think it's a marvellous thing," said the woman when they had gone, "to think of the thousands of exciting tragedies, romances, crimes perhaps, that are being acted out to their ends all round one, and except for a stray little bit of conversation like that, one would never realize it. I remember hearing a woman in a crowd say something to a man in the most awful voice, full of horror, that I've ever heard. I just caught her saying, 'If he finds it out to-night, either I'll kill myself or he'll do it for me,' and then they got out of the crowd, called a hansom and drove away. Positively, I didn't sleep that night, wondering if he had found it out, wondering if he had killed her, wondering if hundreds of other people had found out hundreds of other horrible things. But it all went in the morning. Cissy had a terrible toothache, and I had to take her to the dentist's."