Ben Blair

The man in the shadow shifted his position, and, looking up, Florence found his eyes upon her. "Do you really believe that?" he asked.

"I do, most certainly."

Sidwell lit a fresh cigar, and for a moment the light of the burning match showed his face clearly. He seemed about to say more; but he did not, and Florence too was silent. In the pause that followed, the great express elevator stopped softly at the roof floor. The gate opened with a musical click, and a woman and a man stepped out. Both were immaculately dressed, both had the unmistakable air of belonging to the leisure class. They spied the place Florence and Sidwell had left vacant, and leisurely made their way to it. A waiter appeared, a coin changed hands, an order was given. The man drew out a cigarette case that flashed in colors from the nearby arc-light. Smilingly the woman held a match, and a moment later wreath after wreath of curling blue smoke floated above them into the night.

Florence Baker watched the scene with a strange fascination. She was conscious of having at some time visited a play wherein a similar action had taken place. She had thought it merely a creation of the writer's imagination at the time, but in her present broadened experience she knew better. It was real,--real as the air she breathed. She simply had not known the meaning of life then; she was merely existing. Now she knew!

The waiter returned, bearing something in a cooler. There were a few swift motions, a pop distinctly heard above the drone of the orchestra. The man tossed aside his cigarette and leaned forward. Two glasses with slender stems, each containing a liquid that effervesced and sparkled, one in the man's hand, one in the woman's, met midway of the board. The empty glasses returned to the table.

Many other seekers of pleasure were about, but Florence had no eyes for them. This pair alone, so indifferent to their surroundings, so thoroughly a part of them, perfectly fulfilled her newly formed conception. They had solved this puzzle of existence, solved it so completely that she wondered it could ever have appealed to her as a puzzle at all. Again the formula, distinct as the handwriting upon the wall, stood revealed before her. One had but to live life, not reason it, and all would be well.

Again and again, the delicate glasses sparkled to waiting lips, and returned empty to the table. The man lit another cigarette, and its smoke mingled with the darkness above. In the hands of the waiter the cooler disappeared, and was returned; a second cork popped as had the first. The woman's eyes sparkled as brilliantly as the gems upon her fingers. The languor of the man had passed. With the old action repeated, the brimming glasses touched across the board, were exchanged after the foreign fashion, and again were dry. The figure of the man leaned far over the table. He spoke earnestly, rapidly. Unconscious motions of his hands added emphasis to his words. Neither he nor she who listened was smiling now. Instead, there was a look, identical upon either face, a look somehow strangely familiar to the watcher, one she had met with before, somewhere--somewhere. Memory flew back on lightning wings, searched all the paths of her experience, the dim all-but-forgotten crannies, stopped with pointing finger; and with a tug at her very being, she looked, and unbelieving looked again. Ah, could it be possible--could it? Yes, there it was, unmistakable; the same expression as this before her--there, blazing from the eyes of a group of strange street-loafers, as she herself, she, Florence Baker, passed by!