He felt himself, as he hung round there upon the pavement, rubbing shoulders with the liveried servants, the loafers, and the passers-by, a thing to be despised.

He was like a whipped dog fawning back to his master.

Yet if only he could persuade her to come with him, if it were but for an hour! If only she would sit opposite him in that wonderful little restaurant, where the lights and the music, the laughter and the wine, were all outward symbols of this new life from before which her fingers seemed to have torn aside the curtains! His heart beat with a fierce impatience.

He watched the thin stream of people who left before the play was over, suburbanites mostly, in a hurry for their trains.

Very soon the whole audience followed, commissionaires were busy with their whistles, the servants eagerly looking right and left for their masters.