life and traffic, the vast honeycomb of business and desire; the street was jammed with its brilliant snarl of motors, with shout and horn and cry, and with the throbbing menace of machinery, and on the other side, beneath arched colonnades, the crowd was swarming in unceasing flow.
They crossed the street and made their way through a thronging maze into the Place de la Comédie Française, and found a table on the terrace of La Régence. The pleasant old café was gay with all its chattering groups of afternoon, and yet, after the great boil and fury of the streets, it was strangely calm, detached, and pleasant, too. The little separate verandahs of its terrace, the tables and the old settees and walls, gave the café an incredibly familiar and intimate quality, as if one were seated in a pleasant booth that looked out on life, a box in an old theatre whose stage was the whole world.
In one of the friendly booth-like verandahs of this pleasant old café they found a table in a corner, seats against the wall, and sat down and gave their order to the waiter. Then, for some time, as they drank their brandy, they looked out at the flashing pulsations of the street, and did not speak.
Presently Ann, without looking at him, in her level, curt, and almost grimly toneless speech, said:
“What did you and Frank do last night?”
Excitement caught him; his pulse beat faster; he glanced quickly at her, and said:
“Oh, nothing. We went out to eat, walked round a bit: that was all.”
“Out all night?” she said curtly.
“No. I turned in early. I was home by twelve o’clock.”
“What happened to Frank?”
He looked at her sharply, startled. “Happened? What do you mean—’what happened to him?’”
“What did he do when you went home?”
“How should I know? He went back to the studio, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”
She made no answer for a moment, but sat looking sullenly into the street. When she spoke again, she did not look at him, her voice was level, hard, and cold, quietly, grimly inflectionless.
“Do you think it’s a very manly thing for a big hulking fellow like you to jump on a boy Frank’s size?”
