Between intermissions he took Marya to the floor for a dance or two. The place was uncomfortably crowded: uniforms were everywhere, too; and Jim nodded to many men he knew, and to a few women.
And, in the vast, brilliant place, there was not a man who saw Marya and failed to turn and follow her with his eyes. For Marya had been fashioned to trouble man. And that primitively constructed and obviously-minded sex never failed to become troubled.
“We’d better enjoy our champagne,” remarked Marya. “We’ll be a wineless nation before long, I suppose.”
“It seems rather a pity,” he remarked, “that a man shouldn’t be free to enjoy a glass of claret. But if the unbaked and the half-baked, and the unwashed and the half-washed can’t be trusted to practise moderation, we others ought to abstain, I suppose. Because what is best for the majority ought to be the law for all.”
“If it were left to me,” said the girl, “I’d let the submerged drink themselves to death.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” he said. “I thought you were a socialist!”
“I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination.”
“Why, that’s Bolshevism!”
Her laughter rang out unrestrained: “I believe in Bolshevism––for myself––but not for anybody else. In other words, I’d like to be autocrat of the world. If I were, I’d let everybody alone unless they interfered with me.”