"Order, please!"
Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up
resentfully.
"You wanna order or doncha?"
"Of course," he protested.
"Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."
He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was
after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a
moment he found and translated the
[Illustration: S'DLIHC]
[Transcribers note: The illustration shows the word "CHILD's" in mirror
image.]
in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was
inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.
"Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."
The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking
ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.
God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it
had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines
of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the
lamps of the street--under the lamps.
Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and
yearning.
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