“Night-man. Did you want anything else?” She leaned across the counter, exposing her slim arms, and a pair of delicate hands. She looked up at him, laughing.
Stupidly he remembered that he had come there to drink coffee. He fumbled for his cup.
“No,” he said, “—eh—that is—I’d like some doughnuts.”
She procured the doughnuts, and Paul reluctantly shambled off to a nearby table, where he sat down, facing the counter. It was indeed strange that this girl should exert so much attraction over him. He had seen beautiful women before during his twenty-six years of varied existence. However, he remembered with a smile that since women had meant anything to him at all, he had been in love: first with a stolidly serious young lady, who was now married to a man much older than herself, and then with Marie Tierens. This latter affair had been going on for the past five or six years. It had become his ideal. It had given Paul the conviction that if a man is going to marry a decent woman,—well—the least he can do is to be decent himself. At the heart of civilization, he thought, lay the unitary standard. And thus he had crossed in safety numerous pitfalls which present themselves to the average hack-writer—the small dealer in ideas.
But to-night, ah, well—even one’s deepest ideals are shattered at times. The excruciating emotions of the past few hours had left him like a rudderless ship, adrift in a sea of bewildering passions. Hanaré was gone now. Without Hanaré life could never be the same. And Hanaré’s daughter had changed. She had become an independent woman. There was defiance in her eyes, instead of that ancient girlishness which had always kept hope alive in Paul’s heart. Indeed, the world had changed. For better or for worse, Paul, too, had changed.
In those intense moments of a man’s lifetime, wherein the past, together with the ideals which epitomize the past, are relinquished and a new method of life undertaken—in those moments a man is not fully conscious of all that he is doing. He moves in response to the predominant feeling in his heart. And there opens up before him new and unexplored vistas of life, at the other end of which he hopes to find some sort of Eldorado. To-night Paul was craving for beauty. Beauty to alleviate the coarseness of the death-chamber. Beauty to help him forget the face and the eyes of a girl who could no longer truly be called “his” girl.
He was awakened from his short reverie by a voice close beside him. “Good-night,” it said cheeringly. Paul looked up to behold the girl of the counter, in a blue serge dress, with a dark blue hat slanted to one side of her head. She waved to him as she passed. Paul gathered his queer legs together, and arose.
“Eh—are you going?”
The girl turned. “Yes,” she said, “I’m only on duty until one o’clock.”
“Really? Is it that late?” He felt for his watch, but could not find it.