“Oh, dicky,” said Poppy, “it’s time you were in your little bed!”

He did not take the hint.  He was intent on certain movements of Poppy’s fingers and the tip of her tongue concerned in the making of cigarettes.

He was gazing into her face as if it held for him the secret of the world.  And that look embarrassed her.  It had all the assurance of age and all the wonder of youth in it.  Poppy’s eyes were trained to look out for danger signals in the eyes of boys, for Poppy, according to those lights of hers, was honest.  If she knew the secret of the world, she would not have told it to Ricky-ticky; he was much too young.  Men, in Poppy’s code of morality, were different.  But this amazing, dreamy, interrogative look was not the sort of thing that Poppy was accustomed to, and for once in her life Poppy felt shy.

“I say, Rickets, there goes a quarter to twelve. Did I wake him out of his little sleep?”

Poppy talked as much to the canary as to Rickets, which made it all quite proper.  As for Rickman, he talked hardly at all.

“You’ll have to go in ten minutes, Rick.”  And by way of softening this announcement she gave him some champagne.

He had paid no attention to that hint either, being occupied with a curious phenomenon.  Though Poppy was, for her, most unusually stationary, he found that it was making him slightly giddy to look at her.

He was arriving at that moment of intoxication when things lose their baldness and immobility, and the world begins to float like an enchanted island in a beautiful blood-warm haze.  Nothing could be more agreeable than the first approaches of this blessed state; he encouraged it, anticipating with ecstasy each stage in the mounting of the illusion.  For when he was sober he saw Poppy very much as she was; but when he was drunk she became for him a being immaculate, divine.  He moved in a region of gross but glorious exaggeration, where his wretched little Cockney passion assumed the proportions of a superb romance.  His soul that minute was the home of the purest, most exalted emotions.  Yes, he could certainly feel it coming on.  Poppy’s face was growing bigger and bigger, opening out and blossoming like an enormous flower.

“Nine minutes up.  In another minute you go.”

It seemed to him that Poppy was measuring time by pouring champagne into little tumblers, and that she gave him champagne to drink.  He knew it was no use drinking it, for that thirst of his was unquenchable; but he drank, for the sake of the illusion; and as he drank it seemed to him that not only was Poppy worthy of all adoration, but that his passion for her was no mere vulgar and earthly passion; it was a glorious and immortal thing.

Poppy looked at him curiously.  She was the soul of hospitality, but it struck her that she was being a little too liberal with the champagne.

“No, Razors.  No more fizz.  If I were to drink a drop more it would spoil my little dance that always fetches the boys.”