The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (11.1896)

A Marriage

By Ella D’Arcy

I
IN the upstairs room of a City restaurant two young men were
finishing their luncheon. They had taken the corner table
by the window, and as it was past two o’clock the room was
fairly empty. There being no one at either of the tables next
them, they could talk at their ease.
West, the elder of the two, was just lighting a cigarette. The
other, Catterson, who, in spite of a thin moustache, looked little
more than a boy, had ordered a cup of black coffee. When even
a younger man than he was at present, he had passed a couple
of years in Paris, and he continued, by the manner in which he
wore his hair, by his taste in neckties, and by his preferences in
food and drink, to pay Frenchmen the sincerest flattery that was
in his power.
But to-day he let the coffee stand before him untasted. His
young forehead was pushed up into horizontal lines, his full-lipped
mouth was slightly open with anxious, suspended breath. He
gazed away, through the red velvet lounges, through the gilt-
framed mirrors, to the distant object of his thought.
West, leaning back in his seat, emitting arabesques and spirals
of