A waiter laid a cover for him. She continued to concern herself, leisurely, with her strawberries.
"When did you leave Paris?" she enquired.
She looked up at him very seriously; but they both smiled as she said:
"It was a momentous month for you then--the month of June, 1914?"
"Very. A charming young girl broke my heart in 1914; and so I came home, a wreck--to recuperate."
At that she laughed outright, glancing at his youthful, sunburnt face and lean, vigorous figure.
"When did _you_ come over?" he asked curiously.
"I have been here longer than you have. In fact, I left France the day I last saw you."
"I started that very same day--shortly after sunrise. I crossed the Belgian frontier that night, and I sailed for New York the morning after. I landed here a week later, and I've been here ever since. That, monsieur, is my history."
"You've been here in New York for two years!" he repeated in astonishment. "Have you really left the stage then? I supposed you had just arrived to fill an engagement here."
"_You?_ A try-out!" he exclaimed, amazed.
She carelessly transfixed a berry with her fork:
"If I secure an engagement I shall be very glad to fill it ... and my stomach, also. If I don't secure one--well--charity or starvation confronts me."
"I had not heard that you were here!" he repeated. "I've read nothing at all about you in the papers----"
"No ... I am here incognito.... I have taken my sister's name. After all, your American public does not know me."
The girl's slight gesture checked him, although her smile became humorous and friendly:
"Please! We need not discuss my future. Only the past!" She laughed: "How it all comes back to me now, as you speak--that crazy evening of ours together! What children we were--two years ago!"
Smilingly she clasped her hands together on the table's edge, regarding him with that winning directness which was a celebrated part of her celebrated personality; and happened to be natural to her.
"Why did I not recognise you immediately?" she demanded of herself, frowning in self-reproof. "I _am_ stupid! Also I have, now and then, thought about you----" She shrugged her shoulders, and again her face faltered subtly:
"Much has happened to distract my memories," she added carelessly, impaling a strawberry, "--since you and I took the key to the fields and the road to the moon--like the pair of irresponsibles we were that night in June."