Fischer bowed.
"That is one comparison which will never now be made," he declared, "for from to-night Germany and America will draw nearer together. The bubble of British naval omnipotence is pricked."
"Meanwhile," Van Teyl observed, putting his paper away, "we are neglecting our dinner. Nothing like a good dose of sensationalism for giving us an appetite."
Fischer was watching his glass being filled with champagne. He seized it by the stem. His eyes for a moment travelled upwards.
"I am an American citizen," he said, with a strange fervour in his tone, "but for the moment I am called back. And so I lift my glass and I drink—I alone, without invitation to you others—to those brave souls who have made of the North Sea a holy battle-ground."
He drained his glass and set it down empty. Pamela watched him as though fascinated. For a single moment she was conscious of a queer sensation of personal pity for some shadowy and absent friend, of something almost like a lump in her throat, a strange instinct of antagonism towards the man by her side so enveloped in beatific satisfaction—then she frowned when she realised that she had been thinking of Lutchester, that her first impulse had been one of sympathy for him. The moment passed. The service of dinner was pressed more insistently upon them. James Van Teyl, who had been leaning back in his chair, talking to one of the maitres d'hotel, dismissed him with a little nod and entrusted them with a confidence.
"Say, do you know who's coming to the next table?" he exclaimed.
"Sonia!"
They were all interested.
"You won't mind?" Fischer asked diffidently.
"In a restaurant, how absurd!" Pamela laughed. "Why, I'm dying to see her. I wonder how it is that some of these greatest singers in the world lead such extraordinary lives that people can never know anything of them."