Yes, that was what Cary had to concede, before he had looked and listened very long. Though she was using every art which he had known she possessed, and some he hadn’t known of, she was doing it in a way to which he could not take exception. Though he was becoming momently more jealous of all those watching eyes because he could see how delighted they were, he grew surer and surer that Fanny was definitely and restrainedly doing the whole thing as the boys’ sisters might have done it, if their sisters had been as accomplished as she. His heart warmed to her as it had never warmed before. After all, Cary said to himself, this war had done something splendid to Fanny Fitch as well as to everybody else. She wasn’t a vampire, she was a good sport, and she was playing up, playing the game, with the very best that was in her, just as R. M. B. had said. And Cary was glad; he was gladder than he had ever been about anything.
The moment she had finally left the stage, and the sleight-of-hand man who was the other member of the little company had secured the reluctant attention of the audience, loth to let Fanny go, Cary wormed his way to one side and out of the torchlight into the clear darkness now fully fallen. He went around behind the screen, and found a slim figure in scarlet and black sitting with violinist and concertinist upon a plank, placed across two boxes. An older woman with a plain face and fine eyes looked up at Cary and shook her head at him with a warning smile. Evidently she was in charge, and very much in charge, of this girl who was travelling about France with men performers among so many men in uniform. But before she could send him away Fanny herself had looked up from a letter she was reading by a flash-light the little concertinist was holding for her.
She sprang up with a smothered exclamation of joy and came to him. The older woman rose also and followed her. Fanny turned to her.
“It’s an old friend, Mr. Ray—Mrs. Burnett.” She made the introduction under her breath, for at the moment the audience on the other side of the screen was silent, watching a difficult trick. “He’s a war-correspondent, and I’m sure hasn’t long to stay. Please let me talk with him, just outside here.”
So, in a minute, when Cary had disarmed the duenna with his frank and friendly smile, he led Fanny a stone’s-throw away, just out of the flare of the torches, and looked down into her face.
“Well,” he said, “here we are! And you’re playing the game, for all that’s in it. I’m pleased as Punch that you’ve come along. Tell me all about it, quick. I’ve got to be back in the car that brought me in half an hour, not to delay Colonel Brooks.”
“Then there isn’t time to tell you all about it,” Fanny answered, “and there’s nothing to tell, either, except what you see. I am very happy to be of use—as I think I am.”
“I should say you were. I’ve been watching you for a full half-hour, and I never saw a jollier stunt put over. In that red and black you beat anything in pink and white I ever saw—to speak figuratively. You see—I’ve only seen you in pink and white, before!”
Fanny laughed. “And I’ve never before seen you in olive-drab. You’re perfectly stunning, of course. How did you know I was here—or didn’t you know?”
“The chaplain of the ——th told me,” Cary explained, watching her.