As she laughed, Fred caught the bright spark in her eye that he knew so well, and held it for a happy instant. Then he blew her a kiss with his finger-tips and fled.
IV
At nine o’clock that evening our three friends were seated in the balcony of a French restaurant, much gayer and more intimate than any that exists in New York to-day. This old restaurant was built by a lover of pleasure, who knew that to dine gayly human beings must have the reassurance of certain limitations of space and of a certain definite style; that the walls must be near enough to suggest shelter, the ceiling high enough to give the chandeliers a setting. The place was crowded with the kind of people who dine late and well, and Dr. Archie, as he watched the animated groups in the long room below the balcony, found this much the most festive scene he had ever looked out upon. He said to himself, in a jovial mood somewhat sustained by the cheer of the board, that this evening alone was worth his long journey. He followed attentively the orchestra, ensconced at the farther end of the balcony, and told Thea it made him feel “quite musical” to recognize “The Invitation to the Dance” or “The Blue Danube,” and that he could remember just what kind of day it was when he heard her practicing them at home, and lingered at the gate to listen.
For the first few moments, when he was introduced to young Ottenburg in the parlor of the Everett House, the doctor had been awkward and unbending. But Fred, as his father had often observed, “was not a good mixer for nothing.” He had brought Dr. Archie around during the short cab ride, and in an hour they had become old friends.
From the moment when the doctor lifted his glass and, looking consciously at Thea, said, “To your success,” Fred liked him. He felt his quality; understood his courage in some directions and what Thea called his timidity in others, his unspent and miraculously preserved youthfulness. Men could never impose upon the doctor, he guessed, but women always could. Fred liked, too, the doctor’s manner with Thea, his bashful admiration and the little hesitancy by which he betrayed his consciousness of the change in her. It was just this change that, at present, interested Fred more than anything else. That, he felt, was his “created value,” and it was his best chance for any peace of mind. If that were not real, obvious to an old friend like Archie, then he cut a very poor figure, indeed.
Fred got a good deal, too, out of their talk about Moonstone. From her questions and the doctor’s answers he was able to form some conception of the little world that was almost the measure of Thea’s experience, the one bit of the human drama that she had followed with sympathy and understanding. As the two ran over the list of their friends, the mere sound of a name seemed to recall volumes to each of them, to indicate mines of knowledge and observation they had in common. At some names they laughed delightedly, at some indulgently and even tenderly.
“You two young people must come out to Moonstone when Thea gets back,” the doctor said hospitably.
“Oh, we shall!” Fred caught it up. “I’m keen to know all these people. It is very tantalizing to hear only their names.”
“Would they interest an outsider very much, do you think, Dr. Archie?” Thea leaned toward him. “Isn’t it only because we’ve known them since I was little?”
The doctor glanced at her deferentially. Fred had noticed that he seemed a little afraid to look at her squarely—perhaps a trifle embarrassed by a mode of dress to which he was unaccustomed. “Well, you are practically an outsider yourself, Thea, now,” he observed smiling. “Oh, I know,” he went on quickly in response to her gesture of protest,—“I know you don’t change toward your old friends, but you can see us all from a distance now. It’s all to your advantage that you can still take your old interest, isn’t it, Mr. Ottenburg?”