“It’s tough,” said Jeremy. “It’s a tough thing to do. A woman’s supposed to drink, not because she likes it, but because it’s the fashion or because she needs bucking up. Very well. It’s the fashion to drink a cocktail before your dinner. To that fashion women subscribe—many, perhaps, cheerfully, but that’s their business. If they make a meal of it—ask for a second helping—the assumption or fiction that they’re following a fashion is gone and they’re merely advertising an appetite which isn’t particularly becoming to a man, but actually degrades a woman whoever she is.”
“I’m much obliged,” said Eve. “ ‘Tough’ and ‘degraded.’ I am a topper, aren’t I? I suppose you realize that this is 1930.”
“If you mean I’m old-fashioned, I admit it. I don’t like to see a girl drink. But that’s beside the point. I mayn’t like the fashion, but I don’t shout about it. You can’t curse anyone for toeing the line. But I think it’s a thousand pities to overstep it.”
Eve smote upon the table with the flat of her pretty hand.
“You don’t seem able to see,” she cried, “that you’re blowing a whole gale about nothing at all—nothing. Because there’s a cocktail going spare and I’m fool enough to give it a home, d’you seriously suggest that I shall be branded as a sot? One swallow doesn’t make a drunkard.”
“That’s better,” said Jeremy, smiling. “That’s the way to talk. And of course I don’t, sweetheart. I’m not such a fool. But . . . You are so attractive, Eve, so—so dazzling, you set such a very high standard of sweetness that when you do something that brings us down to earth we’ve got such a long way to fall. A taste for liquor seems so much worse in you——”
“But I haven’t a taste for liquor. I hate it. I don’t care whether I drink a cocktail or not. Yes, I do. I’d much rather drink water.”
“I know you would,” cried Broke; “but no one else does. And when, to put it plainly, you have a couple, then——”
“Everyone knows I don’t drink.”
“But you do . . . you are . . . you’re inviting attention to the fact. Thoughtlessly, idly, of course. You don’t care a damn about liquor: but by having a second cocktail you’re declaring your liking for drink.”