FullReads

I

In the upstairs room of a City restaurant two young men were finishing their luncheon. They had taken the corner table by the window, and as it was past three o’clock the room was nearly empty. There being no one at either of the tables next them, they could talk at their ease.

West, the elder of the two, was just lighting a cigarette. The other, Catterson, who, in spite of a thin moustache, looked little more than a boy, had ordered a cup of black coffee. When even a younger man than he was at present, he had passed a couple of years in Paris, and he continued, by the manner in which he wore his hair, by his taste in neckties, and by his preferences in food and drink, to pay Frenchmen the sincerest flattery that was in his power.

But to-day he let the coffee stand before him untasted. His young forehead was pushed up into horizontal lines, his full-lipped mouth was slightly open with anxious, suspended breath. He gazed away, through the red velvet lounges, through the gilt-framed mirrors, to the distant object of his thought.

West, leaning back in his seat, emitting arabesques and spirals of brown-gray smoke, watched him with interest rather than with sympathy, and could not repress a smile when Catterson, coming abruptly out of dreamland, turned towards him, to say: “You see, if it were only for the child’s sake, I feel I ought to marry her, and the next may be a boy. I should like him to inherit the little property, small as it is. And I’ve no power to will it.”