She put the dress on and found herself startled by the effect. She had drawn back her hair in the exaggerated simplicity that was the mode, allowing two formal ringlets to escape and curl their suggestive way just below either temple. At the corner of one eye a beauty patch gave her glance a sinister coquettishness. She could not have imagined herself so changed. The gown was a shimmering blue-green mass, cut very low, and with the narrowest of shoulder-straps. For a moment Claire had a misgiving. What could she be thinking of to hazard such a costume? But there succeeded a tempestuous wish to be daring, to try her feminine lure to its utmost power, to dazzle for once in her life. And Danilo? What would he think of her? He would be surprised!
She put on her shabby coat and wound a black-lace scarf about her hair. Then she looked into the glass again. Now she might be the old Claire of church social days, for any outside sign to the contrary. She had worn this very cloak and scarf on the night when she had first seen Danilo, less than six months ago! She pushed aside her lace head-covering, and the beauty patch and the intriguing ringlets peeped out. Six months ago she would have been incapable of this deliberate accentuation of her personality. She would not have lacked the desire, perhaps, but she would have been without the skill to accomplish it. What had been taking place in her soul? She had a feeling, as she stared at herself in the glass, that defiance lay back of most of the broken rules of life. She was defiant—defiant! She brought her fist down upon the bureau, and it came to her that she had put this dress on, not to please her Greek friends, not to honor Lycurgus, not to surprise Danilo! No, she had put it on because she hoped to see Stillman at the Café Ithaca. She had put it on out of sheer bravado. She could not bear to have Stillman feel that she was in that place under protest, playing the game half-heartedly. No, she wanted him to think that she liked the life, that she had no regrets, that she was proud and self-contained and reliant. She wanted to wound him.
Outside, the evening was clear and cool. A wind had been blowing all day—the first trade-wind of the season. Presently, she thought, summer would be upon them with its misty, tremulous nights and its wind-swept days. She knew little of the traditional summer of the calendar, warm and opulent. San Francisco had a trick of ignoring climatic rules, playing the coquette with the sun, drawing a veil from the sea across its gray-green face. But Claire had always liked these wayward summer months, liked the swift changes, the salty tang in the air, the voice of the wind in the afternoon among the eucalyptus-trees. There was a certain robust melancholy about all these things, a wind-clean virility.
As she rode down Third Street it seemed to her that the sidewalks were less crowded than usual. The younger men were already off to war. Only a broken few remained, and summer was beckoning these afield, luring them from the paved streets with glib, false promises. By the end of October they would be drifting back again, disillusioned, betrayed by the wanton countryside, seeking to forget all the fine things that had been their springtime hope. They would be drifting back to the mercenary embraces of the town, like embittered lovers turning to the husks of hired caresses for their solace. But spring would come again, and all the old hope and faith and courage with it. Was not life, after all, a succession of springs luminous with promise, and summers whose harvests must, of necessity, fall far short of all the brave anticipations? What summer could possibly yield the marvelously golden fruits of spring's devising?
And, thinking of these things, Claire had a passionate wish that spring might be forever stayed; that life might be a keen, virgin hope, unrealized, but ever ardent, and blinded with the light of fancy.
CHAPTER V
Claire was late in arriving at the Café Ithaca. But in the excitement of preparing a feast her absence had been overlooked. It turned out that St. George's Day was a very special day indeed. Three large banquet-tables had been set, and the general public, by a printed sign at the door, received the news that it was excluded.
The company was just preparing to sit down as Claire entered. Concealed by the folds of the green curtain which screened the saloon, she stood and glanced curiously about. The walls had been transformed into a green bower of wild huckleberry, the tables strewn with fern fronds and red carnations. It seemed that all the old patrons were there, either as hosts or guests, and a strange mixture of outsiders had been bidden to the feast. A few of the Greeks who had married American girls had brought their wives with them, and, of course, among the strangers, the women and men were about evenly divided. A Greek orchestra of three pieces was tuning up.