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“I’m much obliged,” said Eve. “ ‘Tough’ and ‘degraded.’ I am a topper, aren’t I? I suppose you realize that this is 1930.”

“If you mean I’m old-fashioned, I admit it. I don’t like to see a girl drink. But that’s beside the point. I mayn’t like the fashion, but I don’t shout about it. You can’t curse anyone for toeing the line. But I think it’s a thousand pities to overstep it.”

Eve smote upon the table with the flat of her pretty hand.

“You don’t seem able to see,” she cried, “that you’re blowing a whole gale about nothing at all—nothing. Because there’s a cocktail going spare and I’m fool enough to give it a home, d’you seriously suggest that I shall be branded as a sot? One swallow doesn’t make a drunkard.”

“That’s better,” said Jeremy, smiling. “That’s the way to talk. And of course I don’t, sweetheart. I’m not such a fool. But ... You are so attractive, Eve, so—so dazzling, you set such a very high standard of sweetness that when you do something that brings us down to earth we’ve got such a long way to fall. A taste for liquor seems so much worse in you——”