"The only trouble about New York Romance lies just in the fact that it is so whizzingly premature. You've simply got to grab Love the minute before you've made up your mind—because the minute after you've made up your mind, it won't be there. Grab it—or lose it. Grab it—or lose it. That's the whole Heart-Motto of New York. Sinner or Saint—rush—rush—rush—like Hell!"
"Grab it—or lose it. Grab it, or—l-o-s-e it." Like the impish raillery of a tortured devil, the violin's passionate, wheedling tremolo seemed to catch up the phrase, and mouth it and mock it, and tear it and tease it, and kiss it and curse it—and smash it at last into a great, screeching crescendo that rent your eardrums like the crash of steel rails.
With strangely parched lips, the Woodland Girl stretched out her small brown hand to the fragile, flower-stemmed glass, and tasted for the first time in her life the sweety-sad, molten-gold magic of champagne. "Why, what is it?" she asked, with the wonder still wet on her lips. "Why, what is it?"
The Journalist raised his own glass with staler fingers, and stared for a second through narrowing eyes into the shimmering vintage. "What is it?" he repeated softly. "This particular brand? The Italians call it 'Lacrymæ Christi.' So even in our furies and our follies, in our cafés and carousals, in our love and all our laughter—we drink—you see—the—'Tears of Christ.'" He reached out suddenly and covered the Girl's half-drained glass with a quivering hand. "Excuse me," he stammered. "Maybe—our thirst is partly of the soul; but 'Lacrymæ Christi' was never meant for little girls like you. Go back to your woods!"
Scuttle as it might, the precipitate, naked passion in his voice did not quite have time to cover itself with word-clothes. A little gasping breath escaped. And though the Girl's young life was as shiningly empty as an unfinished house, her brain-cells were packed like an attic with all the inherent experiences of her mother's mother's mother, and she flinched instinctively with a great lurch of her heart.
"Oh, let's talk about something—dressy," she begged. "Let's talk about Central Park. Let's talk about the shops. Let's talk about the subway." Her startled face broke desperately into a smile. "Oh, don't you think the subway is perfectly dreadful," she insisted. "There's so much underbrush in it!" Even as she spoke, her shoulders hunched up the merest trifle, and her head pushed forward, after the manner of people who walk much in the deep woods. The perplexity in her eyes spread instantly to her hands. Among the confusing array of knives and forks and spoons at her plate, her fingers began to snarl nervously like a city man's feet through a tangle of blackberry vines.
With a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, the Journalist turned to his more sophisticated neighbor, and left her quite piteously alone once more. An enamored-looking man and woman at her right were talking transmigration of souls, but whenever she tried to annex herself to their conversation they trailed their voices away from her in a sacred, aloof sort of whisper. Across the table the people were discussing city politics in a most clandestine sort of an undertone. Altogether it was almost half an hour before the Journalist remembered to smile at her again. The very first flicker of his lips started her red mouth mumbling inarticulately.
"Were you going to say something?" he asked.
She shook her head drearily. "No," she stammered. "I've tried and tried, but I can't think of anything at all to say. I guess I don't know any secrets."
The Journalist's keen eyes traveled shrewdly for a second round the cautious, worldly-wise table, and then came narrowing back rather quizzically to the Woodland Girl's flushing, pink and white face.