Roger stopped there, and with Pittiwitz in his arms, rose to light his
candle. All about him people were saying things, but their words seemed
to come to him through a beating darkness. There was only one
face--Mary's, and she was leaning toward him, or was it above him? "It
was wonderful," she said.
"It is a great poem."
"I don't mean that--it was the way you--gave it."
Outwardly calm, he carried his candle and set it in its place.
Then he came back to Mary--Mary with the shining eyes. This was his
night! "You liked it, then?"
For a moment she did not speak, then she said again, "It was wonderful."
There were other people about them now, and Roger met them with the ease
of a man of the world. Even Barry had to admit that his manners were
irreproachable, and his clothes. As for his looks, he was not to be
matched with Mary's auburn Apollo--one cannot compare a royal stag and a
tawny-maned lion!
During the rest of the program, Roger sat enthroned at Mary's side, and
listened. He watched the candles, an increasing row of little pointed
lights. He went down to supper, and again sat beside Mary--and knew not
what he ate. He saw Porter's hot eyes upon him. He knew that to-morrow
he must doff his honors and be as he had been before. However, "who
knows but the world may end to-night," he told himself, desperately.
Thus he played with Fate, and Fate, turning the tables, brought him at
last to Delilah Jeliffe as the guests were saying "good-bye."
"Somewhere I've heard your voice," she said with the upsweep of her
lashes. "It isn't the kind that one is likely to forget."
"Yet you have forgotten," he parried.
"I shall remember," she said. "I want to remember--and I shall want to
hear it again."
He shook his head. "It was my--swan song----"
"Why?"
He shrugged. "One isn't always in the mood----"
And now it was she who shook her head. "It isn't a mood with you, it's
your life."
She had him there, so he carried the conversation lightly to another
topic. "I had not thought to give Whittington until I saw Pittiwitz."
"And Mary's green gown?"
Again he parried. "It was dark. I could not see the color of her gown."
"But 'love has eyes.'" The words were light and she meant them lightly.
And she went away laughing.