He spent money like water, and in hardly any time at all, the girl whose salary was thirty-five shillings a week found a delirious joy in expensive wines and foods, in rare flowers, in what was to her an astounding _vie de luxe_. If they went to a theatre--"Gilbert, we simply must have the stage box. I'm not in the mood to sit _anywhere_ else to-night,"--and the stage box it was. There is a shop in Bond Street where foolish people buy cigarettes which cost three pence or four pence each and a box of a hundred is bought for two guineas or so. Rita wouldn't smoke any others. Rita knew no more about wine than she did about astronomy, but she would pucker her pretty brows over the _carte des vins_ in this or that luxurious restaurant, and invariably her choice would fall upon the most expensive. Once, it was at the Ritz, she noticed the word Tokay--a costly Johannesburger wine--and asked Gilbert what it was. He explained, and then, to interest her, went on to tell of the Imperial Tokay, the priceless wine which is almost unobtainable. "But surely one could get it _here_?" she had said eagerly. "It's not on the card, dear." "_Do_ ask, Gilbert!" He asked. A very special functionary was called, who hesitated, hummed and hawed. "There _was_ some of the wine in the cellars, a half bin, just as there _was_ some of the famous White Hermitage--but, but"--he whispered in Gilbert's ear, "The King of Spain, um um um--The Grand Duke Alexis--you'll understand, sir, 'm 'm." They were favoured with a bottle at last. Rita was triumphant. Gilbert didn't touch it. Rita drank two glasses and it cost five pounds. Lothian did not care twopence. He had been poor after he left Oxford. His father, the solicitor, who never seemed to understand him or to care much about him, had made him an infinitesimal allowance during the young man's journalistic days. Then, when the old man died he had left his son a comfortable income. Mary had money also. The house at Mortland Royal was their own, they lived in considerable comfort but neither had really expensive tastes and they did not spend their mutual income by a long way. Gilbert's poems had sold largely also. He was that rare bird, a poet who actually made money--probably because he could have done very well without it. It did not, therefore, incommode him in the least to satisfy every whim of Rita's. If it amused her to have wine at five pounds a bottle, what on earth did it matter? Frugal in his tastes and likings himself--save only in a quantity of cheap poison he procured--he was lavish for others. Although, thinking it would amuse him, his wife had begged him to buy a motor-car he had always been too lazy or indifferent to do so. So he had plenty of money. If Rita Wallace had been one of the devouring harpies of Paris, who--if pearls really would melt in champagne--would drink nothing else, Gilbert could have paid the piper for a few weeks at any rate.