Throughout the beginning of the meal, they
laughed and talked amiably to each other. No one took particular
notice of them. The waiter, attendant upon their table, leant against
a marble pillar some little distance away and surreptitiously
cleaned his nails with the corner of a menu-card. A band played on
a raised platform in some other part of the room. From where they
sat, they could see the conductor leading his orchestra with the
swaying of his violin. He tossed his hair into artistic disorder with
the violent intensity of feeling as he played, and his fingers,
strained out till the tendons between them were stretched like the
strings upon which they moved, felt for the harmonics--shrill notes
that pierced through the sounds of all the other instruments.
In the midst of the rattling of plates, the coming and going, the
buzz of conversation, these two men chatted good-naturedly over
their meal. At its conclusion, they ordered coffee, cigars and
liqueurs, and leant back comfortably in their chairs. Hundreds of
others there, were doing precisely the same as they--thousands of
others in all the restaurants in London. There was nothing remarkable
about their faces, their dress or their manner until one of them
suddenly leant forward across the table, and his expression, from
genial amusement, leapt in sudden changes from the amazement of
surprise to the fierceness of contempt and anger.
Pages:
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523