fed to beasts, but human food--good things, well
cooked and well served. To have seen her, to have seen the
expression of her eyes, without knowing her history and without
having lived as she had lived, would have been to think her a
glutton. Her spirits giddied toward the ecstatic. She began
to talk--commenting on the people about her--the one subject she
could venture with her companion. As she talked and drank, he
ate and drank, stuffing and gorging himself, but with a
frankness of gluttony that delighted her. She found she could
not eat much, but she liked to see eating; she who had so long
been seeing only poverty, bolting wretched food and drinking
the vilest kinds of whiskey and beer, of alleged coffee and
tea--she reveled in Howland's exhibition. She must learn to
live altogether in her senses, never to think except about an
appetite. Where could she find a better teacher? . . .
They drank two quarts of champagne, and with the coffee she
took _creme de menthe_ and he brandy. And as the sensuous
temperament that springs from intense vitality reasserted
itself, the opportunity before her lost all its repellent
features, became the bright, vivid countenance of lusty youth,
irradiating the joy of living.

"I hear there's a lively ball up at Terrace Garden," said he.
"Want to go?"

"That'll be fine!" cried she.

She saw it would have taken nearly all the money she possessed
to have paid that bill. About four weeks' wages for one
dinner! Thousands of families living for two weeks on what she
and he had consumed in two hours! She reached for her half
empty champagne glass, emptied it. She must forget all those
things! "I've played the fool once. I've learned my lesson.
Surely I'll never do it again." As she drank, her eyes chanced
upon the clock. Half-past ten. Mrs. Tucker had probably just
fallen asleep. And Mrs. Reardon was going out to scrub--going
out limping and groaning with rheumatism. No, Mrs. Reardon was
lying up at the morgue dead, her one chance to live lost
forever. Dead! Yet better off than Mrs. Tucker lying alive.
Susan could see her--the seamed and broken and dirty old
remnant of a face--could see the vermin--and the mice could
hear the snoring--the angry grunt and turning over as the
insects----

"I want another drink--right away," she cried.

"Sure!" said Howland. "I need one more, too."

They drove in a taxi to Terrace Garden, he holding her in his
arms and kissing he