“Slag?” she repeated slowly. “Like the crucible? I know what you mean. I think you are in it now, here, don’t you?”
“Dmitri would love you for that,” he exclaimed eagerly. “It’s all he talks about, the inner meaning of things. Like the crucible, the winepress, anything you like that means the big fight where you either make good or go under. I hate to think it’s just chance. Sometimes when we were over in France, you couldn’t help feeling that it was hit or miss. No matter how clever you were or well trained, you might be killed by any chance fragment of shell that strayed your way. It sort of wiped out the old idea of the plan. Know what I mean?” He quoted slowly, half under his breath:
“Our times are in His hand,
Who said, ‘A whole I planned,
See all, be not afraid.’”
Then, turning quickly to the cat, he lit a cigarette.
“Ptolemy, she comes in here and demoralizes us, old man. I’m getting sentimental.”
He sat down to the piano carelessly, striking low minor chords, and then, unlike Jacobelli, he slipped into the first protesting strains of the duet from “Bohème.” There was an enthusiasm and impulsive buoyancy about him that inspired Carlota to sing even as she had not when she had stood before the great maestro, Ames carrying Rudolpho’s answer.
“Look at me when you sing,” he commanded, and she shook her head in confusion.
“Does she not look at the candle?” she asked. “I—I forget when I look at you.”