Berny made an angry movement—sometimes alluded to as “flouncing”—and turned her head away from him.
“Get me an enchilada,” she said peremptorily, “and after that some frijoles. I don’t want anything else.”
The waiter moved away and the man behind the curtain, as if satisfied by his long survey, also turned back into the general room. Close to the opening there was an unoccupied table, and at this he sat down, laid his hat on the chair beside him, and unfastened his coat. To the servant who came for his order, he asked for a cup of black coffee and a liqueur glass of brandy. He also requested an evening paper. With the sheet open before him he sat sipping the coffee, the slightest noise from the inner room causing him to start and lift the paper before his face.
He sat thus for some fifteen minutes. The Spanish women and the child emerged from the archway and left the restaurant, and a few moments later he heard the scraping of chair legs and Berny’s voice as she asked for her bill. He lifted the paper and appeared buried in its contents, not moving as Berny brushed back the lace curtain and passed him. Her eyes absently fell on him and she had a vague impression of the dark dome of a head emerging from above the opened sheets of the journal. As she rustled by he lowered the paper and followed her with a keen watchful glance. He did not move till the street door closed behind her, when he threw the paper aside, snatched up his hat and flicked a silver dollar on to the cloth.
“No change,” he said to the waiter, who came forward.
The surprised servant, unaccustomed to such tips, stared astonished after him as he hurried down the passage between the tables, quickly opened the door and disappeared into the darkness of the street.
Berny was only a few rods away, moving forward with a slow, loitering step. It was an easy night to follow without being observed. Walking at a prudent distance behind her, he kept her in sight as she passed from the smaller streets of the Latin Quarter into the glare and discord of the more populous highways, along Kearney Street, past the lower boundary of Portsmouth Square. He noticed that she walked without haste, now and then glancing at a window or a passer-by. She was like a person who has no objective point in view, or at least is in no hurry to reach it.
But this did not seem to be the case, for when she reached the square she took her stand on the corner where the Sacramento Street cars stop. The man drew back into a doorway opposite. They were the only passengers who boarded the car at that corner, Berny entering the closed interior, the man taking a seat on the outside. He had it to himself here, and chose the end seat by the window. Muttering imprecations at the cold, he turned up his overcoat collar and drew his soft felt hat down over his ears. By turning his head he could see between the bars that cross the end windows, the interior of the car shining with light, its polished yellow woodwork throwing back the white glare of the electricity. There were only three passengers, two depressed-looking women in dingy black, and Berny on a line with himself in the corner by the door. He could see her even better here than in the restaurant. She sat, a small dark figure, pressed into the angle of the seat, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes down. Her hat cast a shadow over the upper part of her face, and below this the end of her nose, her mouth and chin were revealed as pale and sharply-cut as an ivory carving. She seemed to be sunk in thought and sat motionless; the half of her face he could see, looking very white against her black fur collar.
He was furtively surveying her, when she started, glanced out of the window and signed to the conductor to stop. The man on the front dropped to the ground and stole lightly round the car, so that its moving body hid him from her. Emptiness and silence held the street, and he could easily follow her as she walked upward along the damp and deserted sidewalk. Halfway up the block a building larger than those surrounding it rose into the night. A mounting file of bay-windows broke its façade, and, a few steps above the level of the pavement, a line of doors with numbers showing black on illuminated transoms revealed it to the man opposite as a flat building. Here Berny stopped and without hesitation, evidently as one who was familiar with the place, mounted the steps and walked to the last of the doors.
The man, with soft and careful footsteps, crossed the street. As he drew nearer he saw that she was not using a latch-key, but was waiting to be admitted, leaning as if tired against the wall. He had reached the sidewalk when the door opened, vouchsafing him a bright, unimpeded view of a long flight of stairs carpeted in green. Berny entered and for a moment, before the door closed, he saw her mounting the stairs. She had not asked for any one, or indeed made a sound of greeting or inquiry. She was therefore either expected or an habitué of the place. When the door was shut he, too, mounted the porch steps and read the number on the transom. He whispered it over several times, the light falling out on his thin, aquiline face with a sweep of dark hair drooping downward toward his collar.