“Who is she?” asked she.
“The old woman once lived with a student who came to great fame, and——”
She shrugged her shoulders. She turned suddenly and gazed hard at Betty:
“There are tears in your eyes,” she said. “What are you thinking of, my dear?”
Betty sighed, and said hoarsely:
“The waste of women—the waste of women.”
That evening, Aubrey cast his evil eyes upon Moll Davenant.
He sat beside her, showered upon her the subtle flattery of his whole attention, was soon in touch with her thwarted ambitions, was sharing her dreams—and before the evening was out he had set a hedge of confidences round about her that isolated her, with him as sole companion, from the rest of her fellows. With all the moods of her frail talents he was swiftly intimate; and, as he sat leaning forward, his cheek on his hand, gazing intently at her, where she lolled back at his side, his eyes took in every turn and line of the strange pallid beauty of her hungry features. He put off his outward conceit and interested her in herself—as he himself was interested——
There was a loud shout.
A number of the students and their young women rose, and each dragging a chair behind him along the floor, they formed into line, and marched round the café, singing a student song.