of
their guarded tones, their table was one so situated that some freak of
acoustics carried every syllable uttered at it, even though whispered, to
the quick ears at the cashier's desk. A circumstance which had treated
Sofia to many a moment of covert entertainment and not a few that
threatened to shatter what slender illusions had survived eighteen years of
Mama Therese. But nobody else (with the possible exception of the last) was
acquainted with this secret of the restaurant, and Sofia was careful never
to mention it.

Now it so happened that Mr. Karslake had never before sat at that
particular table.

The language spoken at it to-day intrigued Sofia extravagantly. It was rich
in labials, gutturals, and odd sibilances. She was positive it was not a
European tongue, though she thought it might possibly be Russian, because
it sounded rather like Russian print looks; it might just as well have been
Arabic or Choctaw, for all Sofia could say to the contrary. But his fluent
ease in it impressed her with the notion that young Mr. Karslake might not,
after all, be as negligible a person as he looked and as she indifferently
had assumed.

She determined to study him more attentively.

It was rather a long confabulation, too, and one that both men seemed to
take very seriously--though its upshot was apparently quite acceptable to
both--and terminated abruptly with Mr. Karslake announcing, in English,
with every evidence of satisfaction:

"Good! Then that's settled."

To this the older man dissented tolerantly.

"Pardon: nothing is settled; it is proposed, merely."

"Well," said Karslake with a little laugh that to Sofia sounded empty, "at
all events it ought to be amusing."

The other lifted one eyebrow and smiled remotely.

"You think so?"

"To be ordering you about, sir? I should say so!" But his companion wasn't
listening or chose purposely to ignore that accent of respect.

"You are right, my friend," he said, abstractedly: "it will be amusing. But
what in life is not? I fancy that is why most of us go on, because we find
the play entertaining in spite of ourselves. And even when we think of
Death ... there's the possibility that on the other side of the curtain,
where the unseen audience sits, whose hisses and applause we never hear ...
over there it may be more entertaining still!"

Karslake was inquisitively watching his face.

"You would say that," he commented, deference and admiration in his voice