For a moment she looked at the crowd about her, clerks and shopgirls and smartly dressed stenographers hurriedly drinking coffee and eating pie. Then she propped her book against the sugar bowl and began slowly to eat, turning a page from time to time. This was an astonishing book. It was not fiction, but it was even more interesting. She read quickly, skipping the few words she did not understand, grasping their meaning by a kind of intuition, wondering why she had never before considered ideas of this kind.
She was so deeply absorbed that she merely felt, without realizing, the presence of some one hesitating at her elbow, some one who moved past her to draw out a chair opposite her and set down his tray. She moved her coffee-cup to make room for it, and apologetically lifted the book from the sugar bowl, glancing across it to see Paul.
The shock was so great that for an instant she did not move or think. He stood motionless and stared at her with eyes wiped blank of any expression. Her cup rattled as the book dropped against it and the sound roused her. With the sensation of a desperate twist, like that of a falling cat righting itself in the air, she faced the situation.
"Why—Paul!" she said, and felt that the old name struck the wrong note. "How you startled me. But of course I'm very glad to see you again. Do sit down."
In his face she saw clearly his chagrin, his rage at himself for blundering into this awkwardness, his resolve to see it through. He put himself firmly into the chair and though his face and even his neck were red, there was the remembered determination in the set of his lips and the lift of his chin.
"I'm certainly surprised to see you," he said. "From all I've been hearing about you I had a notion you never ate in places like this any more. They tell me you're getting along fine. I'm mighty glad to hear it." With deliberation he dipped two level spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and attacked the triangle of pie.
"Oh, I come in sometimes for a change," she said lightly. "Yes, everything's fine with me. You're looking well, too."
There was an undeniable air of prosperity about him. His suit was tailor-made, and the hat on the hook above his head was a new gray felt of the latest shape. His face had changed very slightly, grown perhaps a bit fuller than she remembered, and the line of the jaw was squarer. But he looked at her with the same candid, straight gaze. Of course, she could not expect warmth in it.
"Well, I can't complain," he said. "Things are going pretty well. Slow, of course, but still they're coming."
"I'm awfully glad to hear it. Your mother's well?" The situation was fantastic and ghastly, but she would not escape from it until she could do so gracefully. She formed the next question in her mind while he answered that one.