“If you are,” Martie answered, with an uncomfortable glance about for watching eyes, “please, please—–!”

“Martie,” he said lovingly, “do you think I am drinking too much?”

“Well—­well, I think you have had enough, Wallace,” she stammered.

“Dearie, I will stop if you say so,” he answered, “but you amuse me.  I am just as col’ sober—–­” And, a fresh reinforcement of cocktails having arrived, he drank one off as he spoke, setting down the little empty glass with a long gasp.

After that the long evening was an agony to Martie.  Mabel laughed and screamed; wine was spilled; the food was wasted and wrecked.  Wallace’s face grew hotter and hotter.  Jesse became sodden and sleepy; champagne packed in a bucket of ice was brought, and Martie saw Wallace’s gold pieces pay for it.

It was not an unusual scene.  She had looked on at just such scenes, taking place at the tables all about her, more than once in the last few weeks.  Even now, this was not the only group that had dined less wisely than well.  But the shame of it, the fear of what might happen before Wallace was safely at home in bed, sickened Martie to the soul.

She went to the dressing room with Mabel, who was sick.  Presently they were all out in a drizzling rain, stumbling their way up the hill and blundering aboard a street car.  Two nice, quiet women on the opposite seat watched the group in shocked disgust; Martie felt that she would never hold up her head again.  Wallace fell when they got off, and his hat rolled in the mud.  Martie tried to help him, somehow got him upstairs to his room, somehow got him into bed, where he at once fell asleep, and snored.

It was just eleven o’clock.  Martie washed her face, and brushed her hair, and sat down, in a warm wrapper, staring gloomily at the unconscious form on the bed.  She could hear Mabel and Jesse laughing and quarrelling in the room adjoining.  Presently Mabel came in for the baby, who usually slept in Martie’s room during the earlier part of the night, so that his possible crying would not disturb Bernadette.

“Poor Wallace—­he is all in, down and out!” Mabel said, settling herself to nurse the baby.  She looked flushed and excited still, but was otherwise herself.  “He certainly was lit up like a battleship,” she added in an amused voice; “as for me, I’m ashamed of myself—­I’m always that way!”

Martie’s indignant conviction was that Mabel might indeed be ashamed of herself, and this airy expression of what should have been penitence too deep for words, gave her a curious shock.

“They all do it,” said Mabel, smiling after a long yawn, “and I suppose it’s better to have their wives with ’em, than to have ’em go off by themselves!”

“They all shouldn’t do it!” Martie answered sombrely.

“Well, no; I suppose they shouldn’t!” Mabel conceded amiably.  She carried the baby away, and Martie sat on, gazing sternly at the unconscious Wallace.