I was but
nineteen years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me
favourably. I was seated at a table of a cafe' on the terrace of a
casino. I sat facing the sea, with my back to the casino. I sat
listening to the quiet sea, which I had crossed that morning. The hour
was late, there were few people about. I heard the swing-door behind
me flap open, and was aware of a sharp snapping and crackling sound as
a lady in white passed quickly by me. I stared at her erect thin back
and her agitated elbows. A short fat man passed in pursuit of her--an
elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had
left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the
efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept
wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the
matter? What had made her so spectacularly angry with him? The three
or four waiters of the cafe' were exchanging cynical smiles and
shrugs, as waiters will. I tried to feel cynical, but was thrilled
with excitement, with wonder and curiosity. The woman out yonder had
doubled on her tracks. She had not slackened her furious speed, but
the man waddlingly contrived to keep pace with her now. With every
moment they became more distinct, and the prospect that they would
presently pass by me, back into the casino, gave me that physical
tension which one feels on a wayside platform at the imminent passing
of an express.
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