Red Masquerade

isse; flanked on one hand by the swing door of green baize which communicated with the kitchen, on the other by a hideous

ers, uninterrupted rows of tables, square, with composition-marble tops, lined three walls o

l tiles, bare in warm weather, in the winter covered by a thick but well-worn Brussels carpet of peculiarly repulsive design. The windows wore half-curtains of net which, after nightfall

he off hours of the day, that she sometimes wondered if

curtains, of heads of passersby gave her idle imagination something to play with, but mostly because it was difficult otherwise to seem unconscious of the stares that converged toward her from every table occupied by

ared, too, but from qui

om would have enlightened even a woman without vanity;

o prove the cause of any real excitement. Mama Thérèse made a first-rate dragon: she was very much on the job of discouraging enterprising young men, and this without respect for union hours or overtime. And when she wasn't functioning as the ubiquitous wet-blanket, Papa Dupont understudied for her, and did it most efficiently, t

mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She was just a little bit afraid of him, and she despised him without measure. And this contempt was founded on something more than his weakness for taking numerous and surreptitious nips (surreptitious, at least, until they became numerous) while pr

i"--had they been less imprudent in recriminations which had passed between them in private when Sofia was of an age so tender that she was presumed to be safely immature of mind.

gely responsible for her failure to run away with each and every presentable man who ogled her, and browbeating the waiters and frustrating their attempts to cheat the house out of its fair dues, and supervising the marketing and the cuisine: be

be fond of Mama Thérèse, who (Sofia was forever being reminded) had in the goodness of her great heart adopted her as the orphaned offspring of a cousin far-removed, and had brought her up at her own expense, expecting no return (except

ght to be requited with

and to Sofia disquietin

ncluded avarice, bad temper, gluttony, native cruelty of inclination, and simple inability to give a damn for anybody but herself, forbade

ion of her spirit. As she conceived it, in this life either things were or they we

say she was content, but she was resigned, she was pa

staurants, or peering out of the windows to catch tantalizing glimpses of its freer, ampler, and--alas!--more recondite phases--sometimes Sofia wondered whe

frolic and, fury of life, marooned in weary isolation, on a hig