He blinked at the lighted room, dim as it was. The heavy air, laden with the fumes of beer, and hazy with the clouds of tobacco-smoke, met him with a pleasant warmth of welcome.
Through the haze he saw that the people sat, silently giving their whole attention to a slender youth who stood at the far end of the room declaiming verse, leaning upon a piano—a grey-haired musician touching mellow chords gently and running a light accompaniment of music atune with the speaker’s fine voice.
Noll was little in need of the superfluous pantomime of a burly thick-set waiter who made melodramatic signs to him to stand still—to make no sound.
As he stood there, listening to the telling accents of the young poet, his eyes ranged over the strange gathering of bohemians who sat about the little round tables. They were shabby enough, some of them, to have been the denizens of a thieves’ kitchen; but there was an atmosphere of culture abroad that took all incongruity from the noble sentiments and subtlety of accent that fell from the lips of the poet in that dingy place.
The women who sat at the tables were not the gay butterflies that flitted in silk and satin about the glittering cafés of the Boule Miche. Their picturesqueness was of a more subtle kind, and its daintiness shone through the pitiful simplicity of meagre apparel.
Here were no rollicking students; here was no frantic fooling; here was a note in the air that Noll had not yet heard sounding in gatherings that laid more strenuous claims to the pursuit of art.
His eyes ranging, caught signs from Aubrey to go and sit beside him; and, the poem ending in a dulcet pathetic sigh for the eternal tragedy of life, Noll took advantage of the resulting bravos and applause to make his way to Aubrey’s table. The quick-eyed waiter was there as soon as he, and bawled Noll’s order for three bocks of beer to the patroness, who shrilly echoed it.
Aubrey was frankly glad to see him; and it was soon abundantly clear to Noll that he was as frankly glad to be relieved from the sole entertainment of the pallid woman beside him. Hélène, too, roused to interest in the fine young Englishman—the frown left her handsome brows.
The grey-haired musician ran his slender fingers over the keys of the piano; and there stepped on to the little platform on which it stood the only man who seemed out of place in that strange company of dreamers. Burly, powerful, big-headed, with cunning eyes that count profits, slits above baggy underlids, he was of the blonde breed that plans and orders—full-bellied, calculating, of those whose fat hands get money, and, with short grasping pointed fingers, hold it when got. He rang a little bell, and silence followed its tinklings.
Hélène leaned over to Noll: