“What do you mean?”
“I mean I haven’t had any since you.”
Now this was the sort of conversation that appealed to Stella and would have kept her in her most attractive role, that of an interested, almost mute audience. Unfortunately the waiter arrived with food and Will was diverted from his “line,” his appetite for victuals being the one thing powerful enough to make him forget Romance.
“These scallops are great!” he said. “Don’t you like scallops?”
“Yes, indeed! I often order them. I love the way they fix them at the Ritz.”
“Is the Ritz a better place to eat?”
“I don’t know. I guess they’re about the same, only the Ritz is more expensive. Maybe it isn’t either, but you think of it as more expensive. That’s why I didn’t suggest meeting you there.”
“Listen, I’m not a pauper!”
“Of course not, Will. Just the same, I’d feel guilty if you spent more on me than you can afford.”
“A man making fifteen thousand a year—”
Stella laughed. “You’re the same old Will! You talk like a millionaire. Why, the men I know, Ralph’s friends and mine, men who make even a bigger income than Ralph, you don’t see them spending five or six dollars on lunch. They appreciate the value of money, and that’s what you never did, Will. I hate stingy people, but there’s a big difference between stinginess and thrift, and it’s the thrifty ones who get along in this world.”
Will could not boast that he was thrifty, but he did think he had got along and Stella’s theory that he hadn’t would have made him pretty mad if the food had been short of delicious.
“You didn’t answer my question,” said Stella at length.
“What question?”
“I asked about your love affairs.”
“I told you I hadn’t had any since you ditched me.”
“Don’t say I ditched’ you, Will. It was just—well, I liked Ralph a lot, and he was serious, and marrying him meant getting away from that deadly place. And you must admit you couldn’t have married anybody in those days. I did care for you, Will. I still do—”
She stopped as if in embarrassment. She hoped he would sustain the sentimental note and his next remark sounded encouraging.
“Not like you used to.”
“How do you know?” she said softly.
“What?”
“I won’t repeat it.”
“I wish you would.”
“No. I mustn’t.”
Will was too intent on his spumoni to insist.
“It will be dark in the theater,” he thought. “I’ll hold her hand and see how she takes it.”
“It will be dark in the theater,” thought Stella, “and maybe he’ll call me ‘dear’ again.”
Her lecture on economy cost the waiter fifty cents, Will giving him half a dollar instead of a whole one as he had planned. He could not help regarding her as a bit inconsistent when she vetoed his suggestion that they walk to the Henry Miller, not four blocks away.
“I’m frightfully lazy,” she said, not mentioning the fact that her shoes hurt.
“All right,” said Will, “but if you’re going to let me buy a taxi, you’ve got to let me take you to dinner at the Ritz.”
“I couldn’t think of it!” said Stella. “For one thing, I’d be sure to see somebody I know. And haven’t you business to attend to, people to look up? I mustn’t take too much of your time.”
“I’ll postpone business till Ralph gets back.”
“I can’t decide just now.”
“You want to be sure you like me.”
“It isn’t that. You know I like you. But there are things to be considered.”
The seats were in the twelfth row.
“These are rotten seats!” said Will.
“You can’t get good ones at the box office.”
“I got these at my hotel.”
“Well, they’re all right. You mustn’t worry on my account. I told you I’d seen it before. We had the fourth row that night, right in the center, just perfect. Herb Small got them through the University Club. He always gets grand seats.”
The curtain rose.
“This is the British front, in the war,” explained Stella. “It’s what they call a dugout, where the officers stay. The whole three acts all take place in the one scene.
“That officer, that lieutenant or whatever he is,” she continued, “he’s a schoolteacher in England. I mean he was, before the war. He gets killed later on. It’s a terribly depressing play. Lillian Fields cried the night we saw it.”
A customer in the eleventh row turned round and gave Stella a nasty look, after which she whispered.
“This young boy, he’s a new officer, he hasn’t been at the front before; at least, not at this front. He’s been transferred or something. And the hero, the captain, is in love with the boy’s sister.
“Not this captain, I don’t mean,” she went on. “The other captain, the leading man, takes this one’s place. He gets mad when he sees his sweetheart’s brother. He doesn’t want anybody that he knows around, because he’s really a coward and of course he’s afraid people will find it out, especially his girl.”
The man in front of them turned round again and said “Ssh!” in none too friendly a manner. Stella thought he must be ssh-ing someone else.
“The only way he can ‘carry on,’ as they call it, is by drinking, so he drinks hard all the time.”
“That man wants us to quit talking,” said Will, and congratulated himself on the diplomatic plural.
“It’s somebody back of us he’s complaining of,” said Stella. “Now when the other captain comes in, you notice him, notice how big he looks. And they say he isn’t really big at all; I mean, off the stage. Some friends of ours, the Coopers, they met him at a party and they say he’s not nearly as big as he looks. He wears some kind of shoes or something that make him look big; I mean, on the stage. You notice when he comes in.”
The theater was dark, but Will seemed to have forgotten the hand-holding test.
“The hero, the captain, the man that’s in love
