"Sylvia, I'm so frightfully hungry," he said. "I don't think I've eaten
anything since breakfast. May we go and forage?"
"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried. "Yes, let's go and see what there is."
Instantly she busied herself.
"Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael," she said.
"Get some wine out, dear. Mother and I don't drink any. And there's some
ham, I know. While you are getting wine, I'll broil some. And there
were some strawberries. I shall have some supper with you. What a good
thought! And you must be famished."
As they ate they talked perfectly simply and naturally of the hundred
associations which this studio meal at the end of the evening called
up concerning the Sunday night parties. There was an occasion on which
Hermann tried to recollect how to mull beer, with results that smelled
like a brickfield; there was another when a poached egg had fallen,
exploding softly as it fell into the piano. There was the occasion,
the first on which Michael had been present, when two eminent actors
imitated each other; another when Francis came and made himself so
immensely agreeable. It was after that one that Sylvia and Hermann had
sat and talked in front of the stove, discussing, as Sylvia laughed to
remember, what she would say when Michael proposed to her.
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