light had again gone out of his eyes. I sighed softly and could not find anything to say. There were footsteps on the stairs and several customers came in. The first one was a short man with a round bloated face; the second one was tall with a rather prominent red nose; there were others behind them and their steps made the small building tremble. I turned to look at Lu Wei-fu, who had just turned around to look at me. So I called the waiter to reckon the bill.
"Can you manage to live on what you get?" I asked him as we got ready to go.
"I get twenty dollars a month, hardly enough to get along on."
"Then, what are you going to do in the future?"
"The future? I don't know. Think if any of the things we used to dream about ever came out as we wished. I don't know anything about the future. I don't even know about tomorrow."
The waiter brought the bill and gave it to me. Lu Wei-fu was not so ceremonious as when he first came in; he only glanced at me, puffed at his cigarette, and allowed me to pay the bill.
We parted at the door of the restaurant, as the hotel where he stayed lay in the opposite direction from mine. I walked toward my hotel, feeling exhilarated by the cold wind and the snowflakes in my face. Dusk had fallen: the houses and streets were all woven into the texture of a white and restless blanket of snow.
