“Champagne,” she answered, decidedly. “I’ve got quite used to it, nowadays,” she went on. “I could laugh to think how strange it tasted when you first took me out.”
“Tell me,” Peter Ruff said, “why you have left your husband?”
She laughed.
“Because he was dull and because he was cross,” she answered, “and because the life down at Streatham was simply intolerable. I think it was a little your fault, too,” she said, making eyes; at him across the table. “You gave me a taste of what life was like outside Streatham, and I never forgot it.”
Peter Ruff did not respond—he led the conversation, indeed, into other channels. On the whole, the supper was scarcely a success. Maud, who was growing to consider herself something of a Bohemian, and who certainly looked for some touch of sentiment on the part of her old admirer, was annoyed by the quiet deference with which he treated her. She reproached him with it once, bluntly.
“Say,” she exclaimed, “you don’t seem to want to be so friendly as you did! You haven’t forgiven me yet, I suppose?”
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“It is not that,” he said, “but I think that you have scarcely done a wise thing in leaving your husband. I cannot think that this life on the stage is good for you.”
She laughed, scornfully.
“Well,” she said, “I never thought to have you preaching at me!”