Without a flicker of expression she resumed the conversation at the exact point apparently where she had been most reluctant to leave it off.
"And so," she brightened. "After the chicken soup, would it not seem to you, for instance, that turkey would be infinitely more chic than—than corned beef?"
Quite regardless of his possible negative she 50turned quickly and summoned a heavy-faced waitress to her.
"Behold it is now a dinner party!" she confided blithely to the perfectly indifferent woman. "The soup, the turkey, the best of your salads, the blackest of your coffee! Everything very chic!"
"Very what?" queried the waitress.
"Very quick!" interposed the Young Doctor.
Once again without a flicker of expression the dark eyes and the blue challenged each other across the narrow width of white table cloth.
Then the owner of the blue eyes reached out and drained her glass of ice water at a single draught.
"Ah!" she shivered. "I also am in more hurry than you. But it would not seem to me polite to nag about it."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," stammered the Young Doctor, and retreated in turn to his own glass of ice water. It was not until the soup course was almost over that he succumbed to any further conversational impulse, and even then indeed it was formality rather than 51sociability that drove him to the effort. "Seeing that you are so kind," he succeeded in enunciating. "And so—so trusting," he relaxed ever so slightly, "the least I can do certainly is to identify myself. My name is Sam Kendrue. And I am a doctor."