Half an hour later a gay, dimpling girl, arrayed in holiday finery, and a stalwart, handsome man with iron-gray hair but an oddly boyish face, were whirling down Fifth Avenue, in a hansom, toward New York's most famous restaurant. The man stopped the cab in front of a florist's shop, disappeared for a moment, and came out carrying a bunch of violets so huge that the two little daintily gloved hands into which he gave the flowers could hardly hold them.
The restaurant table, reserved by telephone while Belinda was making a hasty toilette, was brave with orchids. An obsequious head waiter, impressed by the order delivered over the wire, conducted the couple to the flower-laden table and hovered near them with stern eyes for the attendant waiters and propitiatory eyes for the patron of magnificent ideas.
Even the invisible chef, spurred by the demand upon his skill, wrought mightily for the delectation of the Christmas outcasts—and the outcasts forgot that they were homesick, forgot that they were strangers, and remembered only that life was good.
John Ryder told stories of Australian mine and ranch to the girl with the sparkling eyes and the eager face: talked, as he had never within his memory talked to anyone, of his own experiences, ambitions, hopes, ideals; and Belinda, radiant, charming, beamed upon him across the flowers and urged him on.
Once she pinched herself softly under cover of the table. Surely it was too good to be true, after the gloom of the morning. It was a dream: a violet-scented, French-cookery-flavoured dream spun around a handsome man with frank, admiring eyes and a masterful way.
But the dream endured.
They were late for the theatre, but that made little difference. Neither was alone, forlorn, homesick. That was all that really counted.
After the theatre came a drive, fresh violets, despite all protest, an elaborate supper, which was only an excuse for comradeship.
As the time slipped by a shadow crept into John Ryder's eyes, his laugh became less frequent. He stopped telling stories and contented himself with asking occasional questions and watching the girl across the table, who took up the conversation as he let it fall and juggled merrily with it, although the colour crept into her cheeks as her eyes met the gray eyes that watched her with some vague problem stirring in their depths.
"We must go," she said at last.