"Enter--the wine," she said with a sneer. "Yes, if you will." He was irritated for a second, having meant to say something entirely different. "A woman so loves to hear that a man's passion for her depends upon his drinking!" "I have always been very fond of and grateful to you. It was the whole life that the drinking carried me into--that I had such horror for when, when I became well." "You got well very suddenly after you left me," she told him. Her huge face was livid, and her lips dry. "On the contrary, I was a long time ill." Her temper chilled his attempts at sincerity. "It looked so from those first few--letters, is rather a dignified word." "I say it with shame, I was practically unable to write. I was burnt out when I left here. I had been to Asia--gone from home seven months--and the returning fool permitted the bars to welcome him----" "You seized a moment to dictate a letter----" "Silence would have been far better," he said. "I see that now. My only idea was to let you hear. Writing myself was out of the question by that time." "You wrote an article about stage people--with all the loftiness of an anæmic priest." "That was written before I left here--written and delivered----" "All the worse, that you could write such an article--while you were spending so much time with me." "I have never belittled what you gave me, Selma. I could praise you, without admiring the stage. You are amazingly different. I think that's why New York is talking about you to-night. I had made many trips to New York and knew many stage people, before I met you. If you had belonged to the type familiar to me, I should have needed a stronger stimulus than drink to force an interest. Had there been others like you--had I even encountered 'five holy ones in the city'--I should not have written that stage article, or others before it." "You were one with the Broadway Glowworms, Quentin Charter. Few of them drank so steadily as you." "I have already told you that for a long time I was an unutterable fool. Until three years ago, I did not begin to know--the breath of life."