And in the morning I should have to decide whether or not they should marry; probably they would, from a lack of the courage that looks at itself in the glass and says: “You have failed, my friend.” Yes, it would be truer to make them marry, and perhaps she might be happy in her children, while he found pleasure in the society of another woman. But, at any rate, a dream would have been passed, and that would be the object of my story: to tell simply how everything changes, everything passes; not a new philosophy and one that occurred to Heraclitus, but true nevertheless. And looking across at the couple in the corner, I thought with real sympathy on their sad fate. They were just getting ready to go; the waiter had brought the bill neatly folded upon a plate; the girl had turned towards a large photograph of the Royal Family, and was endeavouring to arrange her hair from the blurred reflection in it. She was smiling and happy, ignorant of the disaster that awaited her. Within five minutes she would have been embraced clumsily, would have assured her lover that “he had spoiled everything,” and the curtain would have descended on the first act of the tragedy. Could nothing be done to save her; it was cruel--so young, so fresh and with so brief a springtime. I was indulging myself in this soft, sentimental reverie, for a story-teller always runs in great danger of confusing his own reality with that of the world, and of regarding everything that happens to himself and to his friends as chapter headings in a novel. I was just, I say, indulging my pet weakness to the top of my bent when suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was the witness of a real dramatic incident.