“Ho!—Yes, it’s a fine feelin’.—Well, wait until you’ve put on a couple of frosts, bhoy! And have to go hat in your hand huntin’ a backer. You lend money, easy.—You’ll see all the barflies that’ve had their ten and their twenty off you time and again—You’ll see ’em run when they see you comin’. Well, here tonight and hell tomorrow.—So Cora’s quit Billy Loeffler, has she? The dhear man! May his children all be acrobats! ’Twas Gus Daly taught the scut every trick he knows. The Napoleon of Broadway! I mind Loeffler runnin’ err’nds for Daly in eighty five.—Well, you wanted to be a manager and here you are and here’s luck.—It’s a fine game—the finest there is—and, mind you, I’ve been a practicin’ bhurglar and a plumber. Drink up.”
They drank and returned to the green theatre, resonant with the prelude of the next act. Mark was struggling in the half lit thresh of men strolling toward their seats when Cosmo Rand halted him.
“You’d not mind coming to supper in our rooms at the Knickbocker?”
Mark accepted. The scene of the Maxim revel was lost to him while he wondered what Cora wanted. He wouldn’t engage her. Carlson’s prejudice was probably valid. The old man swore that she was worthless outside light comedy. Yet she had good notices in all her parts. She was famous for clothes. She signed recommendations for silks and unguents. She had made a dressmaker popular among actresses. She had played in a failure in London whence came legends of a passionate Duke. The Duke’s passion might be invented, like other legends. He mused. The flowing waltz music made him melancholy. What sort of woman was Cora, nowadays? Every one changed. He, himself, had changed. He was getting callous to ready amities, explosions of mean jealousy. He knew nothing of Cora, really. She might be a different person, better tempered, less frank. Women were incomprehensible, anyhow. He would never understand them, doubted that anyone did and sighed. He walked to Cora’s hotel with a feeling of great dignity. She had mauled him badly, abused him, lied to him and now she was seeking peace. Then, rising in the lift, he knew that this dignity had a hollow heart; he was afraid of Cora Boyle.
“This is awfully good of you,” she said, shaking hands. Then she rested one arm on the shelf filled with flowers and smiled slowly, theatrically, kicking her rosy train into the right swath about her feet. Mark felt the display as a boast of her body. She resumed, “There’s really no sense in our looking at each other over a fence, is there?”
His face, seen in a mirror among the flowers, cheered Mark to a grin. He looked impassive and bland. He drawled, “No sense at all,” and stepped back. But she confused him. He had to speak. He said, “That’s a stunning frock.”
“You always did notice clothes, didn’t you? Cosmo, do give Mr. Walling a drink.”
Her voice had rounded and came crisply with an English hint. But it was not music. It jangled badly against Rand’s level, “What’ll you have, sir?” from the table where there were bottles and plates of sandwiches. Mark considered this boy as they talked of “The Merry Widow.” He saw man’s beauty inexpertly enough. Young Rand was handsome in the fragile, groomed manner of an English illustration. His chin was pointed. His eyes seemed brown. His curls lay in even bands. He had neither length nor strength. But he talked sensibly, rather shrewdly.
“There’ll be a deal of money lost bringing over Viennese pieces, of course. This thing’s one in a thousand. Quite charming.”
Mark asked, “You’ve not been over here long?”