“I thought it went pretty well,” she spoke impartially. “I was rather smart to catch his tempo there, at the beginning of the first recitative, when he came in too soon, don’t you think? It’s tricky in there, without a rehearsal. Oh, I was all right! He took that syncopation too fast in the beginning. Some singers take it fast there—think it sounds more impassioned. That’s one way!” She sniffed, and Fred shot a mirthful glance at Archie. Her boastfulness would have been childish in a schoolboy. In the light of what she had done, of the strain they had lived through during the last two hours, it made one laugh,—almost cry. She went on, robustly: “And I didn’t feel my dinner, really, Fred. I am hungry again, I’m ashamed to say,—and I forgot to order anything at my hotel.”
Fred put his hand on the door. “Where to? You must have food.”
“Do you know any quiet place, where I won’t be stared at? I’ve still got make-up on.”
“I do. Nice English chop-house on Forty-fourth Street. Nobody there at night but theater people after the show, and a few bachelors.” He opened the door and spoke to the driver.
As the car turned, Thea reached across to the front seat and drew Dr. Archie’s handkerchief out of his breast pocket.
“This comes to me naturally,” she said, rubbing her cheeks and eyebrows. “When I was little I always loved your handkerchiefs because they were silk and smelled of Cologne water. I think they must have been the only really clean handkerchiefs in Moonstone. You were always wiping my face with them, when you met me out in the dust, I remember. Did I never have any?”
“I think you’d nearly always used yours up on your baby brother.”
Thea sighed. “Yes, Thor had such a way of getting messy. You say he’s a good chauffeur?” She closed her eyes for a moment as if they were tired. Suddenly she looked up. “Isn’t it funny, how we travel in circles? Here you are, still getting me clean, and Fred is still feeding me. I would have died of starvation at that boarding-house on Indiana Avenue if he hadn’t taken me out to the Buckingham and filled me up once in a while. What a cavern I was to fill, too. The waiters used to look astonished. I’m still singing on that food.”
Fred alighted and gave Thea his arm as they crossed the icy sidewalk. They were taken upstairs in an antiquated lift and found the cheerful chop-room half full of supper parties. An English company playing at the Empire had just come in. The waiters, in red waistcoats, were hurrying about. Fred got a table at the back of the room, in a corner, and urged his waiter to get the oysters on at once.
“Takes a few minutes to open them, sir,” the man expostulated.