As the sun set she began to listen for Noll’s footfall. The last sunset glow of the eastern heavens passed into the grey twilight; the chill breath of the evening warned her that her frequent roamings to the balcony must cease; she shut the shutters and the window. But the stairs echoed to no sound of Noll’s eager return. It came to the girl for the first time--selfless as she was--that Noll was finding the sufficient delights of life very well without her; and the thought bit into her heart. She sighed and arose wearily. To-night she must dine alone, as she had so often dined alone of late--yet to-night, for the first time, she resented it--was stung by the whisper that it need not have been. She took her way to the little street of l’Ancienne Comédie. She did not trespass into Noll’s noisier cafés--the noise and the disturbance and restlessness distressed her. Noll preferred “life” at the noisier cafés--the greetings were louder. Betty betook herself languidly now to her dinner, through the white portals of the Café Procope. She stole into a quiet corner, where she was used to sit and think her sweet thoughts, where the pen was always busy. But her weary brain this night was branded with harsh truths from which she could find no hiding-place. She wondered what the great brooding brains that had known this ancient hostel had gnawed upon within these very walls--what petty little insolences had been thrust upon _them_ whilst they were “thinking in continents.” And she felt it a relief when at last the old-world spirit of the place took possession of her, and she found her wits roaming from herself through the pageant of its past magnificence. The dark atmosphere of its sombre peacefulness was lit for awhile with the glory of its ancient days; and the dark corners of the Café Procope became haunted with the mighty breath of its Great Dead. These had been no mediocrities, whatever their faults and failings, but big full-blooded Men--their very sins preposterously magnificent passports to Hell. These were not content to play with the mere toys of life--juggling with echoes. Fallen into the faded relic of bygone days, this peaceful place has passed into the quietude of the neglected thoroughfare on the narrow footway of which stand its white portals. The strenuous world goes rattling past the end of the old road, unheeding of its one-time magnificence; turns but seldom into its neglected way. Its noisy history is now forgot, its splendid drama remembered by how few of them that live in all this vast splendid city--nay, even by how few of such as have their dingy habitation in this very street, or win the prizes of learning in the illustrious schools of its neighbourhood!