“Seriously, Lee, you'd only get angry: I can see Mrs. Grove as though she were in the room--the utmost New York self-satisfaction. And I won't have you discussing my affairs.” “Absurd. A thousand people will be talking about them soon if this isn't managed. I have an idea I had better go to New York and try what can be done there. I got along well enough with the girl herself; and perhaps, though it's not likely, Mrs. Grove has some influence.” “Of course, I can't stop you,” Claire said; her hand strayed over his, on the piano. “I'm simply enraged at myself, Lee. Why, I should let him go with cheers--except where I was sorry for him--but I can't. He is such a sweet child; and, you see, he was all mine.” “I can't leave before Thursday.” He considered. “I'll have a wire sent to the Groves, say something regretful and polite about you--measles.” “Don't bother,” she returned. Peyton came stiffly up to them. “I happened to mention, Claire, that we had some champagne left, and it created the intensest excitement. I told them it would do no good, that you were keeping hold of it; but they insisted on a look at the bottles.” “Get them, Peyton,” she replied unhesitatingly. “I was keeping it, but perhaps for now. This is a very appropriate time for you and me, and the last of the cases left over from our wedding.” An expression of pain tightened his mouth; he turned away without further speech. “We'll have it in the dining-room,” Claire announced; “big glasses filled with ice.” They gathered about the bare table, and Peyton Morris ranged the dark green bottles, capped in white foil, on the sideboard. He worked with a napkin at a cork: there was a restrained sibilant escaping pressure, and the liquid rose in frothing bubbles through the ice. It was, Lee thought, a golden drink, flooded, up to a variable point, with an inimitable gaiety. In comparison whiskey was brutalizing; sherry was involved with a number of material accompanying pleasures; port was purely masculine and clarets upset him; beer was a beverage and not a delight; ale a soporific; and Rhine wines he ignored. Champagne held in solution the rhythm of old Vienna waltzes, of ball rooms with formal greenery, floating with passions as light as the tarleton skirts floating about dancing feet. But it wasn't, he insisted, a wine for indiscriminate youth--youth that couldn't distinguish between the sweet and the dry. It was for men like himself, with memories, unrealized dreams. Ugly women, and women who were old, and certainly prudes, should never be given a sip.