"About getting something to eat?" Her laugh was a ripple of pure joy that had the tonic of the altitudes in it. "I dare say I don't—not in any practical way; though I do go about among our poor people. That is what makes me uncharitable. I can't help knowing why so many people have to go hungry."
Jeffard winced as if the uncharity had a personal application.
"We were speaking of fortunes," he corrected, calmly ignoring the fact that his own remark had brought up the question of the struggle for existence. "I think my own case is a fair example of what comes of chasing ambitious phantoms. I gave up a modest certainty at home to come here, and"—The musicians were taking their places again, and he stopped abruptly.
"And now?" The words uttered themselves, and she was sorry for them when they were beyond recall.
His gesture was expressive of disgust, but there was no resentment in his reply.
"That was some time ago, as I have intimated; and I am still here and beginning to wish very heartily that I had never come. I presume you can infer the rest."
The leader lifted his baton, and the curtain rose on the third act of the opera. At the same moment the curtain of unacquaintance, drawn aside a hand's-breadth by the young woman's curiosity, fell between these two who knew not so much as each other's names, and who assumed—if either of them thought anything about it—that the wave of chance which had tossed them together would presently sweep them apart again.
After the opera the ebbing tide of humanity did so separate them; but when the man had melted into the crowd in the foyer, the young woman had a curious little thrill of regret; a twinge of remorse born of the recollection that she had made him open the book of his life to a stranger for the satisfying of a mere whim of curiosity.
Miss Van Vetter was ominously silent on the way home, but she made it a point of conscience to go to Constance's room before her cousin had gone to bed.
"Connie Elliott," she began, "you deserve to be shaken! How did you dare to talk with that young man without knowing the first syllable about him?"