Ah, young days!'....
"Waiter, a Benedictine!" And hearing her laugh, O his old heart ached.
'No one,' he thought, 'will ever laugh like that for me again!'....
"Here, waiter, how's this?
You've charged me for an ice!" But when the waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror, and saw them clink their glasses filled with golden bubbling wine, and he thought: 'Wish you good luck! For a flash of those teeth, my dear, I'd give----' But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table--yellow and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry.

He saw them suddenly as they were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill of gravy on the cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten.

Wheezing and coughing, 'This place is not what it was,' he thought; 'I shan't come here again!' He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the mirror, and met their eyes resting on himself.

In them he read the careless pity of the young for the old.

His eyes answered the reflection of their eyes, 'Wait, wait! It is young days yet! I wish you no harm, my dears!' and limping-for one of his legs was lame--he went away.
But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the light in their eyes grew brighter.