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 about it. And I am so alone! No one on whom to …" She had gone, murmuring apologies, touched by his instant response, leaving Livingstone as much moved and agitated as she.

She went through into her own rooms and told Joéephine, "Put those manicure things away for the time being. I must go out to do a bit of shopping. But you can have them ready at ten. I'll be back by that time. It won't take me long."

Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in hell could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, God knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night—to put back of him another of those endless, endless days—to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return.

"What?" he said irritably to the smooth-voiced waiter who now approached him with an intimate manner. "Oh, I don't care which table!"

"Here, sir, is one right by the edge of the terrace, where the view is finest," said the waiter in excellent English. "Perhaps the lady would like a screen. There is occasionally a draught from below."

He hastened to set a small screen, to rearrange fussily the handsome silver and linen on the daintily-set table, to slant the single fine rose in the vase at another angle.

Another waiter, also impeccably polyglot, with gleaming hair, admirably cut clothes, and an insinuating manner, now murmured in Neale's ear, "What wine, sir?"

Neale answered on a mounting note of irritation, "Oh, I don't care what wine!"

"We have an excellent Frascati, sir, that is our specialty.