Men selling flowers, toy rabbits, rattling cardboard balls, offered their wares up and down the row of tables. Betty bought a bunch of fading late roses and thought, with a sudden sentimentality that shocked her, of the monthly rose below the window at home. It always bloomed well up to Christmas. Well, in two days she would see that rose-bush.
The trams rattled down the Boulevard, carriages rolled by. Every now and then one of these would stop, and a couple would alight. And people came on foot. The café was filling up. But still none of the women seemed to Betty exactly the right sort of person to know exactly the right sort of hotel.
Of course she knew from books that Hotels keep open all night,--but she did not happen to have read any book which told of the reluctance of respectable hotels to receive young women without luggage, late in the evening. So it seemed to her that there was plenty of time.
A blonde girl with jet black brows and eyes like big black beads was leaning her elbows on her table and talking to her companions, two tourist-looking Germans in loud checks. They kept glancing at Betty, and it made her nervous to know that they were talking about her. At last her eyes met the eyes of the girl, who smiled at her and made a little gesture of invitation to her, to come and sit at their table. Betty out of sheer embarrassment might have gone, but just at that moment the handsome scowling woman rose, rustled quickly to Betty, knocking over a chair in her passage, held out a hand, and said in excellent English: "How do you do?"
Betty gave her hand, but "I don't remember you," said she.
"May I join you?" said the woman sitting down. She wore black and white and red, and she was frightfully smart, Betty thought. She glanced at the others--the tourists and the blonde; they were no longer looking at her.
"Look here," said the woman, speaking low, "I don't know you from Adam, of course, but I know you're a decent girl. For God's sake go home to your friends! I don't know what they're about to let you out alone like this."
"I'm alone in Paris just now," said Betty.
"Good God in Heaven, you little fool! Get back to your lodging. You've no business here."
"I've as much business as anyone else," said Betty. "I'm an artist, too, and I want to see life."