From my place by the stove, I could see
the scalloped edges of the paper with a flaring monogram in the corner and
could even smell the reek of chypre. At each page he turned toward the
toilet-water lady of the advertisement and devoured her with over-luminous
eyes. He had drawn the Austrian blanket over his shoulders, and among
those warring lights he looked more than ever the incarnation of a drugged
moth--a tiger-moth as I thought.
He put his letter into an envelope, stamped it with stiff mechanical
movements, and dropped it in the drawer. Then I became aware of the
silence of a great city asleep--the silence that underlaid the even voice
of the breakers along the sea-front--a thick, tingling quiet of warm life
stilled down for its appointed time, and unconsciously I moved about the
glittering shop as one moves in a sick-room. Young Mr. Cashell was
adjusting some wire that crackled from time to time with the tense,
knuckle-stretching sound of the electric spark. Upstairs, where a door
shut and opened swiftly, I could hear his uncle coughing abed.
"Here," I said, when the drink was properly warmed, "take some of this,
Mr. Shaynor."
He jerked in his chair with a start and a wrench, and held out his hand
for the glass. The mixture, of a rich port-wine colour, frothed at the
top.
"It looks," he said, suddenly, "it looks--those bubbles--like a string of
pearls winking at you--rather like the pearls round that young lady's
neck.
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