He darted his arm across the tablecloth, and clutching my hand by the side of my plate, glared fixedly.

I was startled.

"It must be awfully hard," I stammered, confused by this display of speechless feeling.

"It is--hell," he burst out in a muffled voice.
'This movement and these words caused two well-groomed male globe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in alarm from their iced pudding.

I rose, and we passed into the front gallery for coffee and cigars.
'On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; clumps of stiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wicker chairs; and between the pairs of columns, whose reddish shafts caught in a long row the sheen from the tall windows, the night, glittering and sombre, seemed to hang like a splendid drapery.