So he idled about the marble-columned lobby, now crowded with a typical early-autumn throng in quest of dinner and the various nocturnal amusements which the city offers at all times to the frequenters of its thousand temples.
Rue came out of the ladies’ dressing room, and he went to her and guided her into the dining-room on the left, where an orchestra was playing. In her blue, provincial travelling gown the slender girl looked oddly out of place amid lace and jewels and the delicate tints 106 of frail evening gowns, but her cheeks were bright with colour and her grey eyes brilliant, and the lights touched her thick chestnut hair with a ruddy glory, so that more than one man turned to watch her pass, and the idly contemptuous indifference of more than one woman ended at her neck and chin.
What Rue ate she never afterward remembered. It was all merely a succession of delicious sensations for the palate, for the eye, for the ear when the excellent orchestra was playing some gay overture from one of the newer musical comedies or comic operas.
Brandes at times seemed to shake off a growing depression and rouse himself to talk to her, even jest with her. He smoked cigarettes occasionally during dinner, a thing he seldom did, and, when coffee was served, he lighted one of his large cigars.
Rue, excited under an almost childishly timid manner, leaned on the table with both elbows and linked fingers, listening, watching everything with an almost breathless intelligence which strove to comprehend.
People left; others arrived; the music continued. Several times people passing caught Brandes’ eye, and bowed and smiled. He either acknowledged such salutes with a slight and almost surly nod, or ignored them altogether.
One of his short, heavy arms lay carelessly along the back of his chair, where he was sitting sideways looking at the people in the lobby—watching with that same odd sensation of foreboding of which he had been conscious from the first moment he had entered the city line.
What reason for apprehension he had he could not understand. Only an hour lay between him and the 107 seclusion of the big liner; a few hours and he and this girl beside him would be at sea.
Once he excused himself, went out to the desk, and made an inquiry. But there was no telephone or telegraph message for him; and he came back chewing his cigar.
Finally his uneasiness drew him to his feet again: