“Monsieur desires dinner for one?” he deferentially enquired.

“I am expecting one or perhaps two friends,” I replied.  “I will wait for them half an hour.  If they do not come by the end of that time, I will dine alone.”

“Will Monsieur please to regard the menu?”

“Yes, thanks.”

He put it in my hand with an appetizing bow, which would have been almost as good as an hors d’oeuvre had my mood been appreciative of delicacies.  But it was not; neither could I fix my mind upon the ordering of a dinner.  My eyes would keep jumping to the glass door at the far end of the room.  “I want the best dinner the house can serve,” I said, meanly shifting responsibility.  “Not too long a dinner, but—­oh well, you may tell the chef I depend upon his choice.”

“I quite understand, Monsieur.  A dinner to please a lady, is it not?”

“Yes.  Something to please a lady.”  Was there not the Boy’s sister to be catered for in case she should come?  In thinking of him I must not forget her.  But then, how improbable it was that my poor dinner would be tasted by either!

“And for wine, Monsieur?”

I ordered at random the brand of champagne which had seemed like nectar to the Boy and me that evening in far away Aosta, when the compact of our friendship was first made.  But yes, certainly, it was to be had.  And it should in an all little moment be on the ice.

The waiter glided away to make that little moment less, and I was left to measure it and its brothers.  One after another they passed.  What a pity the moment family is such a large one!  I stared at the glass door.  Other men’s friends came in by it, but not mine.  I glared at the window close to which I sat.  The peculiarly theatrical effect of daylight melting into night, as seen at Monte Carlo and nowhere else, added to the sensation of suspense I felt, as when the curtain is about to rise on the crowning act of an exciting play.

The scene out there in the Place was exactly like a setting for the stage.  The great white Casino, with the constant va et vient to and from the open doorway; the bubbly domes of the fantastically Moorish cafe across the way; the velvet grass, unnaturally green in the electric light; the flower beds in the garden a mosaic floor of coloured jewels; the air blue as a gauze veil, with diamonds shining through its meshes; and over all a serene arch of hyacinth sky, pulsing with smouldering ashes-of-rose just above the purple line of mountain-tops.

A carriage drove quickly past the window, and stopped, far on at the main door of the hotel.  More people for dinner; but not the Boy.  I indistinctly saw a tall man and two ladies in long evening cloaks step out; then I turned my eyes elsewhere.

Over on the brightly lighted balcony of the Cafe de Paris opposite, the “out-of-season” musicians were playing “Sole Mio,” and the yearning strains of that simple, hackneyed Italian love song stirred my veins oddly.