Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in hell could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, God knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night--to put back of him another of those endless, endless days--to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return. "_What?_" he said irritably to the smooth-voiced waiter who now approached him with an intimate manner. "Oh, _I_ don't care which table!" "Here, sir, is one right by the edge of the terrace, where the view is finest," said the waiter in excellent English. "Perhaps the lady would like a screen. There is occasionally a draught from below." He hastened to set a small screen, to rearrange fussily the handsome silver and linen on the daintily-set table, to slant the single fine rose in the vase at another angle. Another waiter, also impeccably polyglot, with gleaming hair, admirably cut clothes, and an insinuating manner, now murmured in Neale's ear, "What wine, sir?" Neale answered on a mounting note of irritation, "Oh, I don't _care_ what wine!" "We have an excellent Frascati, sir, that is our specialty. Not found everywhere, sir. The ladies usually like it. Or...." "All right, serve that," said Neale, adding to himself unreasonably, "If you knew so well, why bother me about it?" The real waiter in charge of his table now arrived in all his majesty, the first one having been but an aide. Neale saw by the earnest expression in his eyes that he intended to make their conference a serious one, and cut him short as he began to call over the possibilities of the menu by a repeated, "All right, that'll do," before he had had time to do more than mention one sort of fish or one entree, or one variety of fowl. "There, _that's_ over!" he said to himself with a long breath of relief as the pained waiter turned away to carry into execution that brutally impromptu order. Eugenia arrived now, followed by a little stir all over the restaurant, as people turned to pay tribute to her beauty and her toilette. "He can't help noticing _that_!" she thought happily, her pride and satisfaction showing itself only in an increase of the perfectly unconscious naturalness with which she took her seat.