She had held his eye with a steady, comprehending glance, under the embarrassment of which his speech faltered and then lapsed altogether. “No, the less either you or Tom have to do with your plan the better. Go in now, and take a plain soda, and wait for me! You’ve got no plan, mind you. You’ve simply been dreaming about it. Do you hear? You never had a plan! You can’t have one!”
She spoke with significant authority, and he deferred to it with a sullen upward wag of the head. “All right,” he muttered curtly, and turned on his heel.
“Plain soda, mind!” she called after him, and without waiting for an answer, ran briskly up the steps toward the stage.
Captain Edward’s plain soda had become a remote and almost wholly effaced memory by the time his wife again summoned him from the manager’s room.
“We’ll cut this now, if you don’t mind,” she remarked, in her most casual tone. “I’m as tired as if I’d danced every minute.” She had put on her wraps, and her small, pretty face, framed by the white down of her hood, seemed to his scrutiny to wear an expression of increased contentment.
“Anything fresh?” he asked, as they went in search of his coat and hat.
“Yes—fresh is the word,” she replied, with simulated nonchalance. “Fresh, fresher, freshest—as we used to say at school.”
“Wha’ is it?” he inquired, when they were within touch of the open air. The music was still audible behind them, broken by faint, intermittent echoes of stamping feet and laughing voices.
“I’ll tell you about it in the morning,” she answered listlessly. “I hope to heaven you’ve got a cab-fare.”
“Yes, tha’s all right,” said Edward, waving his stick toward the rank in the dark middle distance of the street. “Whyn’t you tell me all about it?”