ll, Gregorio Livadas hummed
softly an accompaniment to Suppe's "Poete et Paysan," puffing from time
to time a cloudlet of blue smoke from his mouth. When the music ceased
he joined in the applause, leaning back happily in his chair as the
musicians prepared to repeat the last movement. Meanwhile his eyes
wandered idly over the faces of his neighbors.

When the last chord was struck he saw the women hurry down from the
platform and rush toward the tables where their acquaintances sat. He
heard them demand beer and coffee, and they drank eagerly, for fiddling
in that heat was thirsty work. He watched the weary waiters hastening
from table to table, and he heard the voices around him grow more
animated and the laughter more frequent. One man was fastening a spray
of flowers on the ample bosom of the flautiste, while another sipped
the brown lager from the glass of the big drum, and the old wife of the
conductor left her triangle and cymbals to beg some roses from an Arab
flower-girl. Truly the world was enjoying itself, and Gregorio smiled
dreamily, for the sight of so much gaiety pleased him. He wished one of
the women would come and talk to him; he would have liked to chat with
the fair-haired girl who played the first violin so well. He began to
wonder why she preferred that ugly Englishman with his red face and bald
head. He caught snatches of their conversation. Bah! how uninteresting
it was! for they could barely understand each other. What pleasure did
she find in listening to his bad French? and in her native Hungarian
he could not even say, "I love." Why had she not come to him, Gregorio
Livadas, who could talk to her well and would not mumble like an idiot
and look red and uncomfortable! Then he saw she was drinking champagne,
and he sighed. Ah, yes, these English were rich, and women only cared
for money; they were unable to give up their luxuries for the sake of a
man.

But at this thought Gregorio blushed a little. After all, there was
one woman--the only woman he ought to think of--who was not afraid of
hardship for the sake of her husband. He tried to excuse himself by
arguing that the music had excited him; but he felt a little ashamed,
and as a sop to his not yet quite murdered conscience got up and left
the cafe.

When he turned into the Place Mehemet Ali he remembered suddenly that
he had wasted his evening. It was ten o'clock, too late to set about
the business he had intended. He was angry with hims