Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/34

 “We thought we’d come here to dinner. Well, how are you."

Kate’s skin was already goose-flesh, But the next instant she heard that dingy voice, that spoke so many languages dingily, assailing her with familiarity:

“Ah, Miss Leslie, you missed the best part of it. You missed all the fun! Oh, I say—"

Rage flew into her heart and fire into her eyes. She got suddenly from her chair, and faced the fellow behind her.

“Thank you!" she said. "I don’t want to hear. I don’t want you to speak to me. I don’t want to know you.”

She looked at him once, then turned her back, sat down again, and took a pitahaya from the fruit plate.

The fellow went green, and stood a moment speechless.

“Oh, all right!" he said mechanically, turning away to the who spoke American.

“Well—see you later!" said Owen rather hurriedly, and he went back to his seat at Kate’s table.

The two strange fellows sat at another table. Kate ate her cactus fruit in silence, and waited for her coffee. By this time she was not so angry, she was quite calm. And even Villiers hid his joy in a new sensation under a manner of complete quiet composure.

When coffee came she looked at the two men at the other table, and at the two men at her own table.

"I’ve had enough of, of any sort," she said.

“Oh, I understand, perfectly," said Owen.

After dinner, she went to her room. And through the night she could not sleep, but lay listening to the noises of Mexico City, then to the silence and the strange, grisly fear that so often creeps out on to the darkness of a Mexican night. Away inside her, she loathed Mexico City. She even feared it. In the daytime it had a certain spell—but at night, the underneath grisliness and evil came forth.

In the morning Owen also announced that he had not slept at all.

"Oh, I never slept so well since I was in Mexico,” said Villiers, with a triumphant look of a bird that has just pecked a good morsel from the garbage-heap.

“Look at the frail aesthetic youth!" said Owen, in a hollow voice.