"Aren't you going out to-night?" I inquired.
"Why, yes. Let's see the time. A little after eleven. That's good. You are finished, aren't you? Now, if you want a little recreation and wish to see one of the queerest places in Paris, come with me."
I looked out the window. A cold, dreary night it was. The chimney-pots were dimmed by the thick mist, and the street lamps shone murkily far below. It was a saddening, soaking, dripping night, still, melancholy, and depressing,—the kind of night that lends a strange zest to in-door enjoyment, as though it were a duty to keep the mist and the dreariness out of the house and the heart.
But the studio had worn me out, and I was eager to escape from its pleasant coziness. And this was a Saturday night, which means something, even in Paris. To-morrow there would be rest. So I cheerfully assented.
We donned our heaviest top-coats and mufflers, crammed the stove full of coal, and then sallied out into the dripping fog.
Oh, but it was cold and dismal in the streets! The mist was no longer the obscuring, suggestive, mysterious factor that it had been when seen from the window, but was now a tangible and formidable thing, with a manifest purpose. It struck through our wraps as though they had been cheesecloth. It had swept the streets clear, for not a soul was to be seen except a couple of sergents de ville, all hooded in capes, and a cab that came rattling through the murk with horses a-steam. Occasionally a flux of warm light from some café would melt a tunnel through the monotonous opaque haze, but the empty chairs and tables upon the sidewalks facing the cafés offered no invitation.
In front of one of these cafés, in a sheltered corner made by a glass screen, sat a solitary young woman, dressed stylishly in black, the light catching one of her dainty slippers perched coquettishly upon a foot-rest. A large black hat, tilted wickedly down over her face, cast her eyes in deep shadow and lent her that air of alluring mystery which the women of her class know so well how to cultivate. Her neck and chin were buried deep in the collar of her sealskin cape. A gleam of limp white gauze at her throat lent a pleasing relief to the monotone of her attire. Upon the table in front of her stood an empty glass and two saucers. As we passed she peered at us from beneath her big hat, and smiled coquettishly, revealing glistening white teeth. The atmosphere of loneliness and desolation that encompassed her gave a singularly pathetic character to her vigil. Thus she sat, a picture for an artist, a text for a moralist, pretty, dainty, abandoned. It happened not to be her fortune that her loneliness should be relieved by us.... But other men might be coming afterwards.... All this at a glance through the cold November fog.