Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/415

 foreign faces, the exaggerated gestures, the sudden movements of strange men, who had for him only the semi-human appearance of so many monkeys doing tricks.

He was leaning his elbow on the table, his head on his arm, relapsed into a blank depression of spirits—beaten upon by the loud music and suffocated by the foul smells—when Conroy appeared at the entrance of the hall, and Don ducked his head to hide his face. He looked up under his fingers. Conroy had seated himself at a table against the opposite wall. When the waiter turned away from him, Don could see him, as pale as despair, shabby, unshaven, staring listlessly. Don shut his eyes. The heat had dried them so that the touch of tears was painful.

When he looked again, the waiter had returned with a glass of liquor and the bundle of papers which Pittsey had left at the bar; and Conroy, after vainly trying to understand the man's explanation in Italian, nodded and tried to smile, and sent him away. He drank half the glass at a gulp, and settled back in his chair, drumming on the table with shaking fingers.

The woman on the stage was singing the "Marseillaise." She followed it with "The Watch on the Rhine,"the Russian national anthem, and the Austrian. She announced "God Save Or Caween," and Conroy frowned at her. Her voice rang in the little hall with the deep notes of the old song. It soared with the triumph of "Senda her veectorious, happa an' gloreeous," and Conroy drew down the brim of his hat and muttered. It faded into a whisper, sweet as old memories, with its prayerful "Goda save or ca-ween."