"Vhiskey?" asked Max.
"Yes," said Mary.
"Two of 'em," ordered Max of the waiter that had answered his ring, "an' don'd make 'em so stingy like most you fellers ofer this vay."
The man brought the liquor, placed it before them, and went away.
"Vell," said Max, raising his glass, smiling his thin smile, and apparently forgetting that he had ever denied whiskey; "here ve are, ain't it?"
If Mary was remembering another night and another drink she did not say so; instead, as Max tilted his sleek head far back between his shoulders and dropped the whiskey down his throat, her hand watched for the instant when his gray eyes were on the ceiling and that instant poured the liquor from her own glass to the floor. When her companion's head came forward her fingers, wrapped about the glass, were just withdrawing it from her lips.
"I can drink that better'n I used to," she said.
Max grinned again. So long as she did not upbraid him for his part in it, so long as she did not go into the details of its earlier stages, he had no objection to hearing of her past, was even languidly curious about it, and was certainly sorry that it had not brought her to more seeming prosperity.
"You sure didn't take that like you vasn't used vith it," he said.
"I'll take another just to show you how," she answered, and pressed the nearest button.