Directly, and without showing the least surprise or embarrassment, he changed his expression and saluted us with urbane cordiality, and though he had just gone past our table, he returned, shook hands, and begged leave to sit down beside us.
The Frenchwoman at the neighbouring table was just putting on her gloves, while the actor paid the bill. I should very willingly have told Imszanski not to mind about us, but go on to his acquaintances, who we could see were expecting him. But I refrained, not wishing to lay on his shoulders a burden of gratitude for keeping this matter concealed from Martha, which might later have proved irksome to him.
Stephen, too, understood.
“We are here,” he presently said, “waiting for Madame Wildenhoff, Owinski with his intended, and Czolhanski. It is rather late now: I doubt whether they are going to turn up.”
Imszanski turned aside to say something to a waiter, when he noted with satisfaction that the actors had left the saloon.
He then said he hoped and trusted that we would not look upon him as an intruder, though he had thrust himself on us in such a way.
Czolhanski, a journalist, arrived at about one o’clock, together with Owinski and his fiancée, Miss Gina Wartoslawska, whom I had seen several times previously at Imszanski’s.
Her real name is Regina; but she is called Gina. In the movements of her lithe elastic figure is a sort of snake-like suppleness, which tells us of a nervous nature, burning with a passion almost painfully suppressed. She is like a tame panther. Her eyes, long, narrow, partly concealed beneath thin lids, wander hither and thither about the floor with a drooping, apathetic look. Her lips are broad, flattened as it were by many kisses, moist and crimson as if they bled. And, with all that, there is in her something of the type of a priestess.
She came in, drawing black gloves off her slender hands, greeted us with an unsmiling face, and at once called out to a waiter who was passing by:
“A glass of water!”