So he took them to supper, dismissing their hesitation as unworthy of combat; Susan and Billy laughed helplessly and happily as they sat down at the little table, and heard the German waiter’s rapture at the commands Stephen Bocqueraz so easily gave him in his mother tongue.  Billy, reddening but determined, must at once try his German too, and the waiter and Bocqueraz laughed at him even while they answered him, and agreed that the young man as a linguist was ganz wunderbar.  Billy evidently liked his company; he was at his best to-night, unaffected, youthful, earnest.  Susan herself felt that she had never been so happy in her life.

Long afterward she tried to remember what they had talked about.  She knew that the conversation had been to her as a draught of sparkling wine.  All her little affections were in full play to-night, the little odds and ends of worldly knowledge she had gleaned from Ella and Ella’s friends, the humor of Emily and Peter Coleman.  And because she was an Irishman’s daughter a thousand witticisms flashed in her speech, and her eyes shone like stars under the stimulus of another’s wit and the admiration in another’s eyes.

It became promptly evident that Bocqueraz liked them both.  He began to call Billy “lad,” in a friendly, older-brotherly manner, and his laughter at Susan was alternated with moments of the gravest, the most flattering attention.

“She’s quite wonderful, isn’t she?” he said to Billy under his breath, but Susan heard it, and later he added, quite impersonally, “She’s absolutely extraordinary!  We must have her in New York, you know; my wife must meet her!”

They talked of music and musicians, and Bocqueraz and Billy argued and disputed, and presently the author’s card was sent to the leader of the orchestra, with a request for the special bit of music under discussion.  They talked of authors and poets and painters and actors, and he knew many of them, and knew something of them all.  He talked of clubs, New York clubs and London clubs, and of plays that were yet to be given, and music that the public would never hear.

Susan felt as if electricity was coursing through her veins.  She felt no fatigue, no sleepiness, no hunger; her champagne bubbled untouched, but she emptied her glass of ice-water over and over again.  Of the lights and the music and the crowd she was only vaguely conscious; she saw, as if in a dream, the hands of the big clock, at the end of the room, move past one, past two o’clock, but she never thought of the time.

It was after two o’clock; still they talked on.  The musicians had gone home, lights were put out in the corners of the room, tables and chairs were being piled together.

Stephen Bocqueraz had turned his chair so that he sat sideways at the table; Billy, opposite him, leaned on his elbows; Susan, sitting between them, framing her face in her hands, moved her eyes from one face to the other.