“Not—quite everyone,” replied Geraldstein, who behind his exterior heaviness hid a diplomatic readiness, which was sometimes near akin to wit. “No, I haven’t used it for a long time. Not since I met you.” “Not since you met me?” “No, for you’ve altered my standard of perfection.” “That’s very nice, but perhaps that’s been said before too?” “I don’t remember saying it to anyone else. But are you quite fair? If I didn’t do homage you would think me a fool, and when I do you call me a frivol. It’s not much of a choice for a fellow, is it? Ah! Happy interlude! Coffee. Goldoni’s coffee, and Goldoni’s _fine champagne_, I give you no choice. And a cigarette? It is allowed.” Marian leaned back in her chair, supremely content; lazily happy, idly watching the other diners, satisfied with herself, kindly disposed even to her host. “I hope you don’t mind my not having asked anyone else,” he said after a while. “I knew how much more I should enjoy myself this way, and—I’m nothing if not selfish. Have you enjoyed yourself?” “Need you ask? Can’t you see?” she replied, looking at him with half-closed eyes. “It seems like a dream—don’t wake me from it.” “Don’t let us wake from it till—to-morrow.” CHAPTER XX THE next few days were to Marian days of tumult. Her abandonment of herself to Geraldstein had wrought in her a far more serious and far different change to that which had resulted from her leaving her husband and going to live with Maddison. The latter loved her, Geraldstein did not, indeed made no pretense of doing so, and her feeling toward him was simply one of desire for physical excitement and abandon. With Maddison it was, though of course she did not consciously argue it out as such, an illegal marriage; with Geraldstein she stood merely on the footing of a woman with a price. She now felt utterly adrift, floating upon the ferocious stream of sensual pleasure, intoxicated with excitement, and, as is always the case with every form of intoxication, the hours of recovery, of struggling back to sobriety, were hours of pain, half-regrets, half-formed resolutions toward future restraint, and of deep depression and reaction. She realized fully that she had sold herself to Geraldstein when she received a letter from him inclosing her dressmaker’s bill receipted, and an apology from him for having ventured without first asking her permission, to take this care off her hands. Her first impulse was to be indignantly angry; then with a half laugh, half shudder, she threw the bill aside. As she had sold herself she would be foolish to reject any portion of the price.