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But the Spaniard, cocking his head at Emma's full-sailed manifestation, simply pointed to his own breadth and opened his eyes on Eugene with one warm, brimming question of his own.

It was midday. The street beggars knew it, they sat light-drenched, the blind accordion player with his eyes wide open and his lips formed in a kiss.

"Come on. I'm inviting you, all right. We'll eat," Eugene said, and tipping his finger to his companion's elbow turned him right around.

IV

Eugene thought—as if in the nick of time—that only a good restaurant would do. Besides, though the cafeteria was economical and healthy, just now it had begun to be infested by those wiry, but unlucky, old men forever reading racing forms as they drank coffee; one particularly, in a belligerent pea-green sweater with yellow bands, seemed to change the whole tone of the place simply by always occupying the table anybody else would want. With a suitable indication of where they were going, perhaps, in his smile, Eugene pulled open the door to a restaurant in Maiden Lane.

The Spaniard, with the merest lift of his black brows, walked in shaking the floor around him and proceeded up the staircase, shaking it, to the little upper dining room, where Eugene, as a matter of fact, had never been in his life.

This Spaniard everywhere seemed to be too much at home. He placed his hat, a big floppy black one, carefully on the radiator in the upper hall, not only as if he was perfectly aware without testing it that there was no heat in the pipes, but also as if the radiator existed not to heat others but to hold his hat.

The head waiter couldn't have seated them more showily. They were given a table by the curtained window; its own lamp was instantly flicked on. Huge menus were set up like tents on a camp field between them.

To Eugene the room was somehow old-fashioned and boxy, like a scene in some old silent movie. The gesturing people, who seemed actually to be turning artificial smiles upon them, were enclosed by walls papered in an intrusive design of balls and bubbles, lights behind poppy shades. Filipinos wearing their boys' belts ran around in a constant, silent double-time looking like twins-on-twins themselves, clearing tables, laying cloths, smiling.

The guitar player, with something like a false expression of grief on his face, meditated upon what he would, or would not, eat. With his finger he caressed the air; he decided; and it was probably in French that he responded (like a worshiper in the Catholic Church) to the waiter.

When the food was brought, and then still brought, Eugene sat up straight, still pleased but shocked to some extent at all the Spanish guest had commanded. Was he so great? How great was he, how great did he think he was? How well did he think he played the guitar? These things, in fact, made real mysteries.

Eugene, who got veal, began to count up mentally the money in his billfold, only to lose track, start over, and get lost again. He chewed steadily on his veal in another wonder where he lost himself still further.

Last night, he had not been able to keep from wondering at moments all through the music: what would the artist be doing if he weren't performing? After the songs were finished, then would he be alone, for instance? Those things were not such idle questions.... The fact was, Eugene thought now, he had had speculations about a man on the stage exactly as if he had known he would meet him in closer fashion afterward. As if he had known that by morning he himself would have struck his wife that blow and found out something new, something entirely different about life.

Eugene had been easily satisfied of one thing—the formidable artist was free. There was no one he loved, to tell him anything,.to lay down the law.

The Spaniard tossed a clam shell out of his plate and Eugene at once bent expectantly toward him. He was glad to feel himself in the role of companion and advisor to the artist—just as