"Pay at the desk, please, sir," said the waiter obsequiously.
He half followed them down the room. They had forgotten to tip him.
It was quite obvious that they forgot. Yet his face was a study in
the mingling of disappointment and contempt. He stood there looking
after them; then he chucked up his head in disgust, and catching the
eye of some distant waiter, he made a sign of a nought with his fingers,
and looked up at the ceiling.
As they passed the woman's table, she heard one of them say--
"There's not a straight woman in the whole of that damned set--not
one!" Then they passed out of hearing.
"I think it's a marvellous thing," said the woman when they had gone,
"to think of the thousands of exciting tragedies, romances, crimes
perhaps, that are being acted out to their ends all round one, and
except for a stray little bit of conversation like that, one would
never realize it. I remember hearing a woman in a crowd say something
to a man in the most awful voice, full of horror, that I've ever heard.
I just caught her saying, 'If he finds it out to-night, either I'll
kill myself or he'll do it for me,' and then they got out of the crowd,
called a hansom and drove away.
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