She felt a lump in her throat, an ache of the cruelest disappointment, as though some masker, masking as the fire of life, had suddenly removed the covering of his face and showed her the burnt-out bones beneath. The shift from what she remembered him to what he now appeared was too rapid and considerable for her. She found herself looking at him through a mist of tears--there in the heart of publicity, in the middle of the circle of red velvet curtains!
He turned and saw her. She watched a smile of the frankest pleasure rising, as it were, to the surface of his weary preoccupation. Something had delighted him. Why, it was herself--just her being there! And she could only helplessly blink at him. Was ever anything so stupid as to be caught in tears over nothing! For the next moment he had caught her. She knew by the change of his look, interrogative, amused, incredulous. He straightened and leaned forward.
"Really," he said, "you must remember that little man has only gone out for a glass of beer."
So he thought it was the tenor who had brought her to the point of tears.
"Ah, why do you say that?" she protested.
He continued to smile indulgently upon her. "Would you really rather believe it true?"
"I don't know. But I wish _you_ hadn't thought of the beer."
He brought the glare of his monocle to bear full upon her. "Why not? It is all we make sure of."
So he had taken that side of it. By his words as well as his looks he repudiated all the gallant show of romance he had paraded to her before, and had taken up the cause of the world as flatly as Harry could have done.
"Oh, if to be sure is all you want," she burst out; "but you don't mean it! Wouldn't you rather have something beautiful you weren't sure of, than something certain that didn't matter?"
He nodded to this quite casually, as if it were an old acquaintance.
"Oh, yes; but the time comes round when you want to be sure of something. The sun never sets twice alike over Mont Pelee; but you can always get the same brand of lager to-day that you had the week before." He looked at her with a faint amusement. "And by your expression I take it you don't know how fine some of those brands are. Life is not half bad--even when it is only a means to the beer."