"I didn't hear the particulars," he blundered on. "All I know is, it never came to anything."
"And you've no idea of the reason?" Her flushed face was hidden in the gardenias. Their sensitive petals felt what the man could not see.
Bob threw his cigar out of the window. He wished he could throw himself after it.
"Oh, well, every one can't sing in opera. Poor girl, I suppose her voice wasn't equal to it."
This was perhaps the most unfortunate speech Robert Baxter ever made. Had he known (and he never did know) the true story of that unfilled engagement, he would have died rather than say what he had just said to Betty. If, by some miracle, Robert Baxter, then in New York, had happened into Betty Thompson's little apartment on the Champs Élysêes that afternoon two years ago, when M. Peletier of the Theatre Parnasse called with the contract for Mlle. Elizabeth Thompson to sign, it might have proved the saddest, if not the last, day of M. Peletier's existence. The very recollection of that afternoon brought again to Betty's beautiful face the white-hot flame of anger that, like a sword of fire, drove the satyr-faced impresario screeching in the fear of death from her apartment, down the headlong stairway, across the crowded boulevard, and into the nearest café, where, over a nerve-fortifying petit verre, he wrote the brief note informing Mlle. Elizabeth Thompson, with regrets of the most profound, that he must cancel immediately the engagement of mademoiselle for the Theatre Parnasse, having, after mature deliberation, decided that the voice of mademoiselle, though of the most charming, was not equal to the demands of grand opera.
And now, when Betty pushed back her chair with such violence as to shake the glasses on the table, Bob wondered what was the matter. As she rose the yellowing gardenias dropped to the floor, and it was as if in that moment all their whiteness had gone into Betty's face.
He was on his feet in an instant. She looked as if she were going to faint. His eye went from table to table—except for a waiter or two drifting about at the far end of the great room they were quite alone.
"Betty!" he cried. "Are you ill? For God's sake, what's the matter?"
