When the thirty dollars had been changed and the _patron_ given his
due, Spike stood for a moment at the zinc-covered bar. Rosie Rosenberg
and Belash passed the window and nodded, rather coldly. When the
waiter offered it Spike took _Le Journal_ and sat down at a table in
the window to read of the current _crime passionel_. The words did not
make sense. A vague interior yawn that wouldn't close diverted his
attention. He could only think that presently he must meet the witch
at the _Café de Lilas_. He dreaded the meeting. The clock above the
cashier's desk pointed eleven thirty. It would be better to get there
early.
His legs took him along the _Boulevard Montparnasse_. After longing
for days to see her, he now wished the meeting might be postponed till
tomorrow. What would she say, what would she do when he told her his
decision?
Sunlight, strained through foliage, mottled the round tops of a double
row of tables in front of the cafe's broad windows.
She was at a corner table. Bent over some task of manicuring she seemed
slender and small.
She did not look up. Flecker hesitated.
"_Bon jour!_"
"Oh!"
She raised her hands, startled. She was probably not as startled as
Flecker. It was a shock to see closely the arching black brows, the
dark and lustrous eyes, the slender hooked nose, her mouth, so brightly
red and white. Was this, indeed, the dark beauty that had burned in his
imagination for so long? He had a quick, sharp sensation that her skin
was whiter, her brows not so black as he had thought, that one white
tooth was crooked and from a small mole on her cheek two curved hairs
grew. The broad green hat was a shock. It was hard to accept her in a
green hat when he had found her perfect in black feathers.
She was not, in fact, changed since last they sat together at this same
table. It was only that day and night Flecker had remembered her and
his imagination had been as busy as his memory. It had disembodied her
beauty.... Had she been as radiant as in his dreaming, she could have
moved like a saint at the center of her own light. Spike did not know
what to think, or say.
"It is warm today," she said slowly in her deep voice, not looking up
at him, tapping the edge of the table with her forefinger.
"It _is_ warm," Spike agreed.
"It seems a long time," he added.
"_Oui_, long enough...." She understood what he meant. They both spoke
with difficulty. They were waiting for something to happen--for the
decisive words from him. They would not come.
"The _garçon_ is there," she told him....
"I feel," Spike explained, "as if last night I had been drunk. But I
was not."
"Your hat is _chic_," said Spike. She only smiled. Until they talked of
what filled their minds they could not talk.
"How have you been?" she asked.
He looked back over his shoulder at the clock within the café. It was
eleven forty-five. "I have had a bad time."
Her eyes widened, then he saw the smooth lids and long lashes as her
glance traveled down from his face to his nervous hands on the table.
"At first you were not sure?"
"It was difficult to decide!"
"But, tell me.... But you decided, finally."
Spike nodded. "Yes," he said, bravely. "I decided."
Beyond the trees was the crowded boulevard. High, two-wheeled coal
carts, drawn by horses fit for knights; trolleys, taxis, trucks,
bicycles, went by in a constant stream--a student from the Sorbonne
wearing his round cap, an artist in a smock, an hospital nurse in a
stiff white gown, workmen in visored caps and peg-top corduroys, a
carpenter carrying a long ladder, women in mourning, shawled women with
market baskets, little companies of slim girls in close, plain hats
and skirts like sheaths, a priest reading a newspaper as he walked,
small white-faced boys in black sateen aprons, carrying school books,
exchanging shrill talk.
"Tell me.... Please tell me, what did you decide?"
Spike took a deep breath.
"I decided that I could never decide," he said.
He looked without wonder at the world and there seemed to be no light
in it. The surface of things was true. The world was a procession of
suffering and boredom.
He was filled with a sense of irreparable loss, and of shame. He had
awakened knowing he would never be able to decide, and had lived
through the half day without admitting it to himself. But when he
said "I could not decide," he knew it was all over. He had let go the
world's greatest opportunity.
"_Mon dieu_, have you everything you desire?"
"I have nothing," Spike told her. His eyes gleamed with resentful,
ironic humor. "I have nothing but desires for what I haven't got."
He heard her deep breath and looked around to see her smiling!
"Finally I wished I was dead! But nothing happened!"
She touched his arm. "Nothing happened because you didn't really wish
to die. You only said words!"
The touch on his arm was so gentle he sat feeling nothing else.