Their cigars burnt low, their coffee was drained; yet still they continued, voices pitched now on a lower key, but none the less intense, none the less spurred with vital interest. The man apparently most concerned had ceased from the urging of his questions. His elbows were resting on the table, his face was in his hands. Now and again he nodded in understanding, now and again he ejaculated some remark, pressing his companion to the full measure of what he had to say. Obviously it was a story--the relation of some incident, reluctantly dragged from the one by the persistent, unyielding demands of the other. The woman at the near table put up her hand to her ear, shutting off the conversation of those with her, striving to catch a word here and there in the endeavour to piece it together. It was about some woman. She--was continually being alluded to. She--had done this--at a later date she had done that. Gathering as little as she did, the woman who listened was still strangely fascinated to curiosity. Then at last a whole sentence reached her ears in a sudden hush of sound. The man took his elbows from the table, as if the climax of the story had been reached. "I know!" he said excitedly; "I know--the type of woman who never breaks a commandment because she daren't, yet never earns a beatitude because she can't; but, my God, if this isn't true--" Then the other began his reply-- "My dear fellow--should I come and--" She heard no more. A renewed deafening clatter of plates from the grill drowned the remainder of his sentence. "There's a little tragedy behind us," said the woman, leaning forward, speaking under her breath to one of her companions. They all turned and gazed in the direction of the table. Then the two men stood up. One of them picked up the bill. "Pay at the desk, please, sir," said the waiter obsequiously. He half followed them down the room. They had forgotten to tip him. It was quite obvious that they forgot. Yet his face was a study in the mingling of disappointment and contempt. He stood there looking after them; then he chucked up his head in disgust, and catching the eye of some distant waiter, he made a sign of a nought with his fingers, and looked up at the ceiling. As they passed the woman's table, she heard one of them say-- "There's not a straight woman in the whole of that damned set--not one!" Then they passed out of hearing.