They finished the second cocktail. Susan was pleased to note that Brent was again looking at her; and she thought—though she suspected it might be the cocktail—that there was a question in his look—a question about her which he had been unable to answer to his satisfaction. When she and Howland were at one of the small tables against the wall in the restaurant, she said to him:
"You know Mr. Brent?"
"The play man? Lord, no. I'm a plain business dub. He wouldn't bother with me. You like that sort of man?"
"I want to get on the stage, if I can," was Susan's diplomatic reply.
"Well—let's have dinner first. I've ordered champagne, but if you prefer something else——"
"Champagne is what I want. I hope it's very dry."
Howland's eyes gazed tenderly at her. "I do like a woman who knows the difference between champagne and carbonated sirup. I think you and I've got a lot of tastes in common. I like eating—so do you. I like drinking—so do you. I like a good time—so do you. You're a little bit thin for my taste, but you'll fatten up. I wonder what makes your lips so pale."
"I'd hate to remind myself by telling you," said Susan.
The restaurant was filling. Most of the men and women were in evening dress. Each arriving woman brought with her a new exhibition of extravagance in costume, diffused a new variety of powerful perfume. The orchestra in the balcony was playing waltzes and the liveliest Hungarian music and the most sensuous strains from Italy and France and Spain. And before her was food!—food again!—not horrible stuff unfit for beasts, worse than was fed to beasts, but human food—good things, well cooked and well served. To have seen her, to have seen the expression of her eyes, without knowing her history and without having lived as she had lived, would have been to think her a glutton. Her spirits giddied toward the ecstatic. She began to talk—commenting on the people about her—the one subject she could venture with her companion. As she talked and drank, he ate and drank, stuffing and gorging himself, but with a frankness of gluttony that delighted her. She found she could not eat much, but she liked to see eating; she who had so long been seeing only poverty, bolting wretched food and drinking the vilest kinds of whiskey and beer, of alleged coffee and tea—she reveled in Howland's exhibition. She must learn to live altogether in her senses, never to think except about an appetite. Where could she find a better teacher? . . . They drank two quarts of champagne, and with the coffee she took crême de menthe and he brandy. And as the sensuous temperament that springs from intense vitality reasserted itself, the opportunity before her lost all its repellent features, became the bright, vivid countenance of lusty youth, irradiating the joy of living.
"I hear there's a lively ball up at Terrace Garden," said he.
"Want to go?"