Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/213

 His moodiness had chastened her, killed the hilarity that had been in her manner earlier in the evening. He guessed that there were still tears for her to shed before the night was over. It was grossly unfair, he chided himself, to have created a difficult situation for her and then leave her to solve it. As they made their way along the crowded boulevards it was strange to realize that if he were to stop and suggest on the spot that they leave at once for South America she would agree as fatalistically as if he had suggested another cherry brandy. And here he was unreasonably detaining her when she might be forgetting her woes in the arms of some nameless passer-by.

At length they found themselves before a big theatre where a mass of bizarre figures were arriving for a fancy dress ball.

"Oh, que c'est joli!" cried Marthe with a mercurial change of mood. She was now like an enraptured child before a windowful of dolls. "Let's stop and watch them, veux-tu?"

They paused at the edge of a carpet spread from the doorway to the curb. Devils and cardinals, shepherdesses and South Sea Islanders scurried past, shivering in the night air.

"Voilà Colombine et Harlequin qui s'amènent," said Marthe in glee, and Grover smiled at the sight of a fat, fair-haired man squeezing himself out of a taxicab and fumbling absent-mindedly in his enormous tights for a pocket which wasn't there. Columbine, in a thin