There were so many Faces, they came and went so constantly, like bubbles in
a tideway, that to Sofia most of them seemed indistinguishable one from
another, mere blurs of flesh colour studded with staring eyes and slitted
by apertures which automatically and alternately gaped to receive gobbets
of food and goblets of drink and closed to gulp them down. A man needed to
be remarkable for something in his looks, not necessarily pulchritude, or
for uncommon individuality, for Sofia to favour him with more than one of
her seemingly casual glances or to remember him if he visited the cafe a
second time.
But those there were who stood out from the rank and file, for whom she
watched, whom she missed if they failed to put in appearance at their
accustomed hours, about whom her idle but able imagination wove wonderful
fantasies, enduing them with histories and environments as far removed from
fact as the drab dreams of the realists are from the picturesque
commonplaces of everyday.
And there were others who came once and never again, but whom she never
forgot. But for some of these last, indeed, she would never have remembered
some of the former. The brown-eyed youngster with the sentimental
expression and the funny little moustache, for example, lurked in the ruck
a long time before the one and only visit of a bird of passage dignified
him in the sight of the girl on the high stool.
On the occasion of his first appearance (but that was long ago, Sofia
couldn't remember how long) the slender young man with the soulful eyes and
the insignificant moustache had commended himself to her somewhat derisive
attention by seeming uncommonly exquisite for that atmosphere.
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