After the first chill of surprise, Claire somehow recovered herself. She wondered whether Danilo remembered that tense moment six months ago when he had pulled his audience out of a slough of indifference by fixing his passionate gaze upon her. She had an impulse to ask, but there was something vaguely disturbing about him. Was she fascinated, or repelled, or overwhelmed? She gave it up. But sitting opposite him, so close that she could have touched his hand if she had dared, she grew to feel that when he smiled nothing else really mattered. It was plain that Lycurgus was his abject slave.
As the dinner progressed, Claire found that she was to be relieved of her post at the piano by the continuous rumblings of the orchestrion. Between courses, Nellie Whitehead and Billy Holmes danced, while Claire and the doctor talked—that is, she let him talk—about himself and his work and his native land. It was this last topic that flamed him most completely. Claire listened parted-lipped as he poured out the history of Serbia's wrongs. He pictured his country ravaged, broken, desolate, buffeted like a shuttlecock between the rackets of fate. His own people were scattered like chaff. His mother—he merely raised his hand at the mention of her name and let it fall again.
Boldly, with swift, sure strokes, he gave her glimpses of far-flung horizons, community griefs, national sorrows, the bleeding of people en masse. She had experienced something of this before, six months ago, when he had harangued the Second Presbyterian Church into grudging applause, but now, to-night, he was within reach, warm and personal and palpitant.
"I am going back ... in the fall ... to ... to...."
He stopped, fumbling for the proper word, as one not to the language born sometimes does.
She felt a great courage sweep over her. She wanted him to remember.
"Yes," she cried, "I know! To a blood-red dawn! You are going back to a blood-red dawn!"
How he smiled! "Ah," escaped him. "Then you remembered, too!... You were the only one at first in the whole room who listened.... I had never spoken to quite such a crowd before.... I saw you twice ... after. Once you were dancing. The second time you were alone ... in a doorway.... But to-night, here.... I was not prepared to find you here and so...."
She was both pleased and annoyed. Why had she not waited for him to spur her memory?
Presently Lycurgus brought champagne. It appeared that this was a very special date, although every one had forgotten it except the Greek.