There was nothing casual about the man, though, she reflected
afterward. He'd taken his part, adequately and politely, of course, in
the introduction and the fragmentary word or two of small-talk that had
followed it, but Alice doubted if he'd really seen her at all. And when
a man didn't see Alice--this was a line of reasoning she was quite
candidly capable of--it meant an intensity of preoccupation that one
might call monstrous--portentous, anyway.
Rose asked him if he minded the Brevoort, which was near by and airy, on
a warm spring day like this, and he assented to it with enthusiasm. He
hadn't been there in years, he said. She wished, a little later, that
she had thought twice and had taken him somewhere else, where she wasn't
quite so obviously well acquainted. The cordial salutation of the head
waiter, the number of people who nodded at her from this table or that,
might well have been dispensed with on an occasion like this. And the
climax was when the table waiter, well accustomed to having her bring
guests of either sex to lunch with her, and on confidential terms with
her gustatory preferences, handed her a menu--as a matter of form--told
her what he thought she'd like to-day, and, getting out his pencil and
his card, prepared to write it down.
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