VI

Hah; Strelinsky! Ça va bien, hein? A figure had risen out of the earth at Mr. Mendizabal’s elbow and stood looking down at him; another foreigner. She glanced with an air of proprietorship; a slender man in a thin faded grey overcoat, a sharp greyish yellow profile and small thin head under a dingy grey felt hat. Strelinsky. Mr. Mendizabal stood sturdily up bowing with square outstretched hand, wrapped in the radiating beam of his smile. I present you Mr. Strelinsky. A musician. A composer of music. His social manner was upon him again; fatherliness, strong responsible hardworking kindliness. The face under the grey hat turned slowly towards her. She bowed and looked into eyes set far back in the thin mask of the face. Her eyes passed a question from the expressionless eyes to the motionless expressionless face. How could he be a composer; looking so⁠ ⁠… vanishing? Strelinsky⁠ ⁠… Morceau pour piano ⁠ ⁠… that must be he standing here; did you write this she said abruptly and hummed the beginning. It sounded shapeless and toneless, but there was a little tune just ahead. She broke off short of it not sure that he was attending; the world burst into laughter; his face turned slowly and stopped looking downwards across her, his eyes fixed in a dead repetition of the laughter in which she was drowning. He stood in space in a faded coat and hat, a colourless figure clothed by her feebleness in lively dignity and wisdom⁠ ⁠… grouped inaccessibly beyond the vast space were solid tables filled with judges; dim figures stood in judgment in the amber light under the gallery where palms stood; she was drowning alone, surrounded by a distant circle of palms. Eleven. We must go miss stated Mr. Mendizabal cordially. Miriam rose. The tide of café life flowed all round her. She wandered blissfully out through the misty smoke-wreathed golden light, threading her way amongst the tables towards the black and gold of the streets. Far away behind her, staying in the evening, Strelinsky blocked the view, moving, fixed avertedly, with eyes in his shoulders along an endless narrowing distance of café.