Sometimes these incidents came to the ear of Esther, the daughter of the proprietor, and made her heart burn; for Esther was fair to look upon, and yet had reached and passed her twentieth year without a single offer of marriage. With all her beauty the girl was absolutely devoid of charm; there was something even in the tone of her voice that repelled men; probably a reflection of her arrogance and selfishness. Then, one day, Eulie beheld her talking to David; saw that her face was animated, and that David’s eyes were fastened intently upon her. In Esther’s eyes she read that story which, between woman and woman, is an open book. When her work was finished that night Eulie hastened to her room, and, throwing herself upon the bed, burst into a flood of weeping. The affair progressed rapidly. There were times when Eulie, after serving him with coffee, would stand silently behind David, gazing upon him intently, yearning to throw her arms around that curly head and cry, “I love you! I am your slave!” But these became rarer and rarer, for Esther demanded more and more of his presence, and it was seldom that he sat alone in the coffee house. Eulie had never seen him manifest any of those lover-like demonstrations toward Esther that might have been expected under the circumstances, but she attributed this to his pride. Probably, she thought, when they were alone, beyond the reach of prying eyes, he kissed her and caressed her to her heart’s content. The thought of it wore on her spirit. And when, one day, Esther told her that they were to be married at the end of a month Eulie turned pale and trembled, and then hurried to her room. A few days after this announcement had been publicly made, and congratulations had begun to pour in from the many patrons of the establishment, who had known Esther from childhood, Eulie observed a change in David’s demeanour. He seemed suddenly to have become worried. He would come to the coffee house late at night, after Esther had retired, and sit alone over his coffee, brooding. Eulie’s duties permitted her to leave at nine o’clock, but if David had not come at that hour, she continued to work, even until midnight, the closing time, in the hope that she would see him enter. He rarely spoke to her, rarely noticed her, in fact, but Eulie, in her heart, had established an intimacy between them. An intimacy? Rather a world of love and devotion, in which, alas! she lived alone with a shadow.