And so, as it came to be eight o'clock, I caught myself watching certain vacant chairs at our table and at the two smaller tables in the next room with a strained curiosity.
One by one the vacant chairs filled up.

At intervals the door behind me would open and an officer would clank in, dusted over with the sift of the French roads.

He would bow ceremoniously to his chief and then to the company generally, slip into an unoccupied chair, give an order over his shoulder to a soldier-waiter, and at once begin to eat his dinner with the air of a man who has earned it.

After a while there was but one place vacant at our table; it was next to me.

I could not keep my eyes away from it.