e proprietor if that will cover the damage!"

A great explosion of squeaky French followed, a word or two of Italian.
The waiters parted and this American stepped out. I had expected to see
him taller, but his power was in the weight of his shoulders, the easy
swing of his drunken progress down the aisle. The devil-may-care was in
him--in his handsome, laughing, wild eyes--the look of a child mad with
the promise of a world of pleasures.

"Pay?" he roared again. "I pay as I go! Live? I live as I like! Out of
the way, dishes! You are here to-day; on the ashheap to-morrow! So with
all of us."

With that he pulled off another tablecloth, sending the glassware
rolling into splinters.

"Come! Collect!" he said, holding a fistful of notes in the air. "How
much? How much? Quickly! I see mirrors down beyond! You lie, you
mirrors! I'm walking straight! You lie!"

There was no stopping him. With a heavy crooked cane in his strong hand
and the perspiration running from his handsome face, he staggered toward
the spot where I was sitting. And yet, though he had raised his stick to
strike the chandelier above the next table and had let out a yelp of
childish delight before he saw me, I had felt no fear of him.

I can tell you, the effect of the meeting of our eyes was astonishing.
I'm thinking there wasn't a muscle in his body that did not pull at him
to straighten him up, to take off his hat, to bend him a little
backward, as if he had thrust his face among thistles.

As I sat there, looking at those brown eyes of his and listening to his
frightened, heavy breathing, I knew well enough I had come to a place
where my road of life split and ran in two directions. There are things
we know, not by thought or reason or culture, but by the instincts, I'm
thinking, that Heaven has put into us along with the rest of the
animals. And he knew it, too, perhaps, for he saw me leaning forward on
my elbows and a little white and scared of something that can't be put
into words at all, and it sobered him, I can tell you.

"What are _you_ doing here?" he said, as though he had known me these
six thousand years.

Silly fool that I was, the color came rushing up into my face and I
feared to speak. Believe it or not as you like, I could see Welstoke's
thin lips saying, "Though your nose and your eyes is very refined, it's
your manner of speech as discloses you, my poor dear," and I was silent
as a stone, for I thought him a fine gentleman.