As soon as the melon was served, he ordered the champagne opened. "To our better acquaintance," said he, lifting his glass toward her.
"Thank you," said she, in a suffocated voice, touching her glass to her lips.
He was too polite to speak, even in banter, of what he thought was the real cause of her politeness and silence. But he must end this state of overwhelmedness at grand surroundings. Said he:
"You're kind o' shy, aren't you, Lorna? Or is that your game?"
"I don't know. You've had a very interesting life, haven't you? Won't you tell me about it?"
"Oh—just ordinary," replied he, with a proper show of modesty. And straightway, as Susan had hoped, he launched into a minute account of himself—the familiar story of the energetic, aggressive man twisting and kicking his way up from two or three dollars a week. Susan seemed interested, but her mind refused to occupy itself with a narrative so commonplace. After Rod and his friends this boastful business man was dull and tedious. Whenever he laughed at an account of his superior craft—how he had bluffed this man, how he had euchered that one—she smiled. And so in one more case the common masculine delusion that women listen to them on the subject of themselves, with interest and admiration as profound as their own, was not impaired.
"But," he wound up, "I've stayed plain Ed Gideon. I never have let prosperity swell my head. And anyone that knows me'll tell you I'm a regular fool for generosity with those that come at me right. . . . I've always been a favorite with the ladies."
As he was pausing for comment from her, she said, "I can believe it." The word "generosity" kept echoing in her mind. Generosity—generosity. How much talk there was about it! Everyone was forever praising himself for his generosity, was reciting acts of the most obvious selfishness in proof. Was there any such thing in the whole world as real generosity?
"They like a generous man," pursued Gid. "I'm tight in business—I can see a dollar as far as the next man and chase it as hard and grab it as tight. But when it comes to the ladies, why, I'm open-handed. If they treat me right, I treat them right." Then, fearing that he had tactlessly raised a doubt of his invincibility, he hastily added, "But they always do treat me right."
While he had been talking on and on, Susan had been appealing to the champagne to help her quiet her aching heart. She resolutely set her thoughts to wandering among the couples at the other tables in that subdued softening light—the beautifully dressed women listening to their male companions with close attention—were they too being bored by such trash by way of talk? Were they too simply listening because it is the man who pays, because it is the man who must be conciliated and put in a good humor with himself, if dinners and dresses and jewels are to be bought? That tenement attic—that hot moist workroom—poverty—privation—"honest work's" dread rewards——