They were occupying the stage now, it was true, but there was something warm and human and ragged about the performance.  Flint was not a mere spiritless allegory in red-satin doublet and hose to give flame to his conventionality.  Instead, she saw sitting opposite her a ponderous, quick-breathing, drunken male, handsome in a coarse, rough-hewn way, speaking in the quick, clipped speech of passion and striking her to the ground with the energy of his stage business.  She was afraid, almost for the first time in her life, with a primitive, abandoned fear.  And suddenly her vista of womanhood narrowed to include the ugly foreground of life that youth had looked over in its eager, far-flung scanning of the horizon beyond.  Suddenly she felt all the oppression and sorrow of the sex bear down upon her and mark her with its relentless finger.  Because she was a woman she would pay for every joy with a corresponding sorrow; receive a blow for every caress; know courage and fear with equal intimacy....  She stopped eating and she began to realize with a vivid terror that Flint was looking at her fixedly and beginning to speak.

“What’s the matter with the sweetbreads?  Don’t you like ’em?...  And the wine?...  Say, I’m going to get peeved in a minute.  You don’t suppose we serve this French-restaurant style of meal every day do you?  I should say not!  That’s another one of the frau’s convictions.  Plain living at home so as to set the right example to the girls!” Flint threw his head from side to side, mincing out his last statement.  “Gad!  I’m tired of setting a good example!...  And even Sing gets tired.  Chinks, you know, like to cook a bang-up meal once in a while.  They like a chance to show their speed and put in all the fancy trimmings.”

His mood, during this speech, had changed with drunken facility from irritability to good humor.  Claire, still attempting to marshal her wits, picked up her fork again and murmured: 

“Oh, you have a Chinese cook, then?  I had no idea....  The Japanese boy, you know.  They say that the two never get along.”

“That’s a fairy-tale.  Besides, it’s next to impossible, these days, to get a Chinese second-boy.  And the missus won’t hire a girl.”  He winked broadly.  “Can’t get one ugly enough, I guess.  Sing’s a wonder.  I copped him from the Tom Forsythes. You know—­young Edington’s in-laws.  They’ve never quite forgiven me.  Though they will come back and tuck away one of his dinners occasionally.”

Claire’s mind closed nimbly over Flint’s statement.  “The—­the Tom Forsythes of Ross?” she asked.

He nodded and tossed a glass of wine off in one gulp.  The Tom Forsythes of Ross ...  Edington’s sister ...  Ned Stillman!  The sequence of ideas flashed through Claire’s mind with flashing detachment.  She leaned back in her seat and raised the wine-glass in obvious pretense to her lips.  Flint was watching her keenly:  an ugly gleam was in his eyes.