“Think of a big strong man making his living that way,” said Walters, disgusted.
“I do it all... de matiere premiere au profit de l'accapareur,” said the rabbit man.
“Hello, Andy... late as hell.... I'm sorry,” said Henslowe, dropping down into a chair beside them. Andrews introduced Walters, the rabbit man took off his hat, bowed to the company and went off, making the rabbit hop before him along the edge of the curbstone.
An open cab had driven up to the curb in front of the cafe. In it sat Heineman with a broad grin on his face and beside him a woman in a salmon-colored dress, ermine furs and an emerald-green hat. The cab drove off and Heineman, still grinning, walked up to the table.
The grin left Heineman's face; he said: “How do you do?” curtly, cast a furious glance at Andrews and settled himself in a chair.
The sun had set. The sky was full of lilac and bright purple and carmine. Among the deep blue shadows lights were coming on, primrose-colored street lamps, violet arc lights, ruddy sheets of light poured out of shop windows.
“Let's go inside. I'm cold as hell,” said Heineman crossly, and they filed in through the revolving door, followed by a waiter with their drinks.
“I've been in the Red Cross all afternoon, Andy.... I think I am going to work that Roumania business.... Want to come?” said Henslowe in Andrews' ear.
“If I can get hold of a piano and some lessons and the concerts keep up you won't be able to get me away from Paris with wild horses. No, sir, I want to see what Paris is like.... It's going to my head so it'll be weeks before I know what I think about it.”
“Don't think about it.... Drink,” growled Heineman, scowling savagely.
“That's two things I'm going to keep away from in Paris; drink and women.... And you can't have one without the other,” said Walters.
“True enough.... You sure do need them both,” said Heineman.
Andrews was not listening to their talk; twirling the stem of his glass of vermouth in his fingers, he was thinking of the Queen of Sheba slipping down from off the shoulders of her elephant, glistening fantastically with jewels in the light of crackling, resinous torches. Music was seeping up through his mind as the water seeps into a hole dug in the sand of the seashore. He could feel all through his body the tension of rhythms and phrases taking form, not quite to be seized as yet, still hovering on the borderland of consciousness. “From the girl at the cross-roads singing under her street-lamp to the patrician pulling roses to pieces from the height of her litter....All the imaginings of your desire....” He thought of the girl with skin like old ivory he had seen in the Place de Medicis. The Queen of Sheba's face was like that now in his imaginings, quiet and inscrutable. A sudden cymbal-clanging of joy made his heart thump hard. He was free now of the imaginings of his desire, to loll all day at cafe tables watching the tables move in changing patterns before him, to fill his mind and body with a reverberation of all the rhythms of men and women moving in the frieze of life before his eyes; no more like wooden automatons knowing only the motions of the drill manual, but supple and varied, full of force and tragedy.