“Well, I'm going to sleep,” said Andrews sulkily.
John Andrews sat at a table outside the cafe de Rohan. The sun had just set on a ruddy afternoon, flooding everything with violet-blue light and cold greenish shadow. The sky was bright lilac color, streaked with a few amber clouds. The lights were on in all the windows of the Magazin du Louvre opposite, so that the windows seemed bits of polished glass in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten at the end of its rubber tube.
“Et ca va bien? le commerce,” said Andrews.
“Quietly, quietly,” said the rabbit man, distractedly making the rabbit turn a somersault at his feet. Andrews watched the people going into the Metro.
“The gentleman amuses himself in Paris?” asked the rabbit man timidly.
“Oh, yes; and you?”
“Quietly,” the rabbit man smiled. “Women are very beautiful at this hour of the evening,” he said again in his very timid tone.
“There is nothing more beautiful than this moment of the evening... in Paris.”
“Or Parisian women.” The eyes of the rabbit man glittered. “Excuse me, sir,” he went on. “I must try and sell some rabbits.”
“Au revoir,” said Andrews holding out his hand.