"Yes, yes! That's dreadful, too. But when people are young—"
"Oh, when people are young!" He said this in despair. Then he went on in an audible muse. "When people are young they are not only in their own youth; they are in the youth of the world, the race. They dine, but they don't think of the dinner or the unpleasantness of the diners, and the grotesqueness of feeding in common. They think—" he broke off in defect of other ideas, and concluded with a laugh, "they think of themselves. And they don't think of how they are looking."
"They needn't; they are looking very well. Don't keep harping on that! I remember when we first began going to dinners, I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I don't mean when I was a girl; a girl only goes to a dinner because it comes before a dance. I mean when we were young married people; and I pinned up my dress and we went in the horse-cars, or even walked. I enjoyed every instant of it: the finding who was going to take me in and who you were; and the going in; and the hovering round the table to find our places from the cards; and the seeing how you looked next some one else, and wondering how you thought I looked; and the beads sparkling up through the champagne and getting into one's nose; and the laughing and joking and talking! Oh, the talking! What's become of it? The talking, last night, it bored me to death! And what good stories people used to tell, women as well as men! You can't deny it was beautiful."
"I don't; and I don't deny that the forms of dining are still charming. It's the dining itself that I object to."
"That's because your digestion is bad."
"Isn't yours?"
"Of course it is. What has that got to do with it?"
"It seems to me that we have arrived at what is called an impasse in French." He looked up at the clock on the wall, and she gave a little jump in her chair. "Oh, there's plenty of time. The taxi won't be here for half an hour yet. Is there any heat left in that coffee?"
"There will be," she said, and she lighted the lamp under the pot. "But I don't like being scared out of half a year's growth."
"I'm sorry. I won't look at the clock any more; I don't care if we're left. Where were we? Oh, I remember—the objection to dining itself. If we could have the forms without the facts, dining would be all right. Our superstition is that we can't be gay without gorging; that society can't be run without meat and drink. But don't you remember when we first went to Italy there was no supper at Italian houses where we thought it such a favor to be asked?"