She was not happy, it would be stretching the truth to say she was content,
but she was resigned, she was patient, she waited not altogether without
confidence....
All the same, sometimes, as she sat, day in day out, on her high stool,
looking down on familiar aspects of life's fermentation as it manifests in
public restaurants, or peering out of the windows to catch tantalizing
glimpses of its freer, ampler, and--alas!--more recondite phases--sometimes
Sofia wondered whether there were not grimly cynic innuendo in those three
words which the mystery of choice had affixed to the window-panes and
graven so deep into her soul.
CAFE DES EXILES
For surely she was in exile there, an exile from all the fun and frolic
and, fury of life, marooned in weary isolation, on a high stool, in a
frowsty table d'hote, in the living heart of London.
II
MASKS AND FACES
Quite naturally she became acquainted with Faces....
She grew adept at a game which consisted mostly in keeping close watch upon
those who for this reason or that engaged her attention, without giving
them the slightest reason to suspect she was doing anything of the sort.
One could not always be staring in abstraction at nothing in particular as
it passed to and fro on the sidewalk in front of the Cafe des Exiles; one
could not often or for long at a time succeed in reading a book held open
in one's lap, below the level of the cashier's desk, Mama Therese was too
brisk for that; one had to do something with one's mind; and it was
sometimes diverting to watch and speculate about people who looked
interesting.
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