Dinner was over, and had been acceptable. Her father had partaken of everything with his careful appraising attention, and had found no adverse comment to make. Coffee had been served, and the Chartreuse—Biron had not forgotten.
Out in the kitchen Biron (first, taught by much experience, loosening the sash which bound his mighty paunch), was sitting with his wife at table, eating and drinking like a page out of Rabelais. The dinner had pleased his exacting and irritable master (Biron immensely respected him for being exacting and irritable), and it also had pleased Biron. There was plenty of it left and this was a house where the cook was never subjected to the indignity of having inquiries made about les restes. He leaned back in his chair, undid the button at his throat, and smiled at his wife, over his glass of excellent Burgundy.
"Life is good, hein, old lady?" he said.
She nodded in agreement, keeping her thoughts to herself in the usual stealthy, secretive, feminine fashion.
Over the coffee and Chartreuse, facing another well-satisfied man sat another secretive woman, talking in one key, feeling in another, and finding the process far from enlivening. Down below the surface of the sparkling, chatting Marise, drooped a listless, dispirited Marise for whom a birthday was a most depressing occasion.
"You're nineteen, aren't you, Marise?" asked her father over his cigar.
Marise nodded.
"Well, that's another one gone! Congratulations on every one you get over with," he commented, sipping the stinging green fire of his liqueur with satisfaction.
Marise thought of nothing amusing to say and was silent.