The other did not answer. He stood stock still, staring almost stupidly straight before him.
Max linked an arm in his. "What's wrong? Garcia! What's wrong with you?" he repeated.
The Spaniard started. "I beg your pardon," he stammered, dazed. "I didn't realize you were—speaking—to me."
Instantly Max guessed that "Juan Garcia," the name appearing with the "numero matricule" over the bed of le bleu, was as new as his place in the Legion, and as fictitious as the alleged profession of garcon d'hôtel which accounted cleverly for the recruit's stained evening clothes.
"I only asked you what was wrong, what made you stop so suddenly?" Max explained.
"It was that thing the band is playing now," said the Spaniard. "Strange they should have it here already! It is out of the new African opera by Saltenet, "La Naïlia," produced for the first time ten days ago—a trial performance at Marseilles, and on now at the Opera Comique in Paris. Good heavens! Another world, and yet these extraordinary men are playing that song here already—my song!"
"Your song?" involuntarily Max echoed the words.
"My song. If a certain letter hadn't come to me on the night of the last rehearsal but one, and if we hadn't been in Marseilles, rehearsing, I shouldn't be here to-night. I should be in Paris, perhaps coming on to the stage at this moment, where I suppose my understudy is grimacing like the conceited monkey he is."
"By jove!" was all that Max could find to say. But he put several emotions into the two words: astonishment, warm sympathy, and some sort of friendly understanding.
"You wonder why I tell you this?" Garcia challenged him.