This time his eyes were on her and she had to drink. But she did not scruple: so long as she retained her head and Max lost his, the effect of the alcohol on her system concerned her but little.
They had a third drink, for "old time's sake," as Mary suggested, and this she succeeded in pouring down her dress-front. At the fourth, Max began to show signs of fear that he would have a drunken woman on his hands, but Mary's patent sobriety soon reassured him, and overcame his protests against a fifth by recalling his promise of liberality.
His cold eyes sparkled into a faint light. Little spots of red appeared in the olive of his cheeks. He felt the advance of the enemy in his veins and tried to go; but Mary began an imaginative narrative of her recent experiences and insisted on his listening. When he at last successfully interrupted that, she twitted him with being able to drink less than his pupils, and Max was once more forced to order. He was not drunk, or nearly drunk, but the fine edge of his discretion was dulled: he saw in the woman, who had now moved to his side, nothing that, whatever motives might be at work, could possibly harm him; he found something ludicrous in the situation. Her looks seemed better than they had appeared an hour earlier, and her tentative advances flattered him.
Mary, though she had drunk more than was good for her, had managed to spill enough liquor to retain all the sobriety she needed; but, when they at last rose, she swayed a little unsteadily.
"Now," she said, "you'll just buy me a half-pint for my head in the mornin', an' then you'll walk as far as my door."
Still enjoying the piquancy of the affair, he obeyed her. He even consented to come to her hall-bedroom with her—a room the exact reproduction of that which she had formerly rented farther uptown—and there, forgetful of the provision against the morning, they finished the half-pint.
At last he stood up from the bed on which he had been sitting while she, opposite, used the single chair.
"Vell," he said, grinning; "it's been good to see you again, und maybe I'll gome back some efenin'."
She rose before him. The light was at her back and her face resumed, as she stood there, some furtive traces of its earlier grace. The eyes seemed to soften, the cheeks were a natural pink beneath their coating of rouge, and her russet hair, curling about her face, relieved the harder outlines and cast a gentle shadow around the neck. She spread out her arms.
"Kiss me," she said.