“Happen!” cried Mendel. “What can happen?”
“I’ll tell you to-night,” replied Mitchell gloomily, “at the Pot-au-Feu.”
And not another word did he say, neither during their morning’s work, nor during lunch, nor in the train, nor in the taxi-cab that took them to Soho.
“You wait outside,” said Mitchell mysteriously.
Mendel waited outside and paced up and down, oppressed with the idea that his friendship with Mitchell was at an end. He was left helpless and exposed, for all that had been built on the friendship had come toppling down, and with it came the extra personality he had developed for dealing with the Detmold and the polite world—the Kühler who had assiduously learned manners and phrases, vices and enthusiasms, as a part to be played at the Paris Café and in the drawing-rooms of the languid ladies who were interested in art and artists. Hetty Finch went with it, for she had been an adjunct of that personality. . . . He was glad to be rid of her, and shook her off, plucked her out of his mind like a burr that was stuck upon it.
After a quarter of an hour or so Mitchell came out more mysterious than ever, took his arm and led him into the restaurant, which was hardly bigger than an ordinary room. Full of vigour and health as he was, Mendel felt an enormous size in it, as though he must knock over the tables and thrust his elbows through the painted panels. Madame Feydeau, the proprietress, greeted him with a wide smile and said she had missed him lately. At his table was the goggle-eyed man who dined there every night with his newspaper open in front of him. Weldon and a girl with short hair were sitting in uncomfortable silence, both with the air of doing a secret thing. Near the counter, with its dishes of fruit and coffee-glasses, was Hetty Finch, rather drawn and pinched in the face and very dark under the eyes.
Mendel was filled with impatience. She had no business to be sitting there, for he had disposed of her, and she made everything seem fantastic and unreal. He shook hands with her and sat at the table. Mitchell took the chair next to Hetty and talked to her in an undertone, while her eyes turned on Mendel with a frightened, inquiring expression.
“All right,” he said, as though he had understood her question. “I know when to hold my tongue.”
Mitchell went on whispering, and every now and then he bowed his head and clenched his fists, as though he were racked with inexpressible emotions. He too had become fantastic. Mendel knew that he was play-acting, and with a sickening dread he went back over all he knew of Mitchell, recognizing this same play-acting in much that he had accepted as genuine. Yet he would not believe it, for Mitchell was his friend, and therefore never to be criticized.