He looked at her wistfully. This collapse must not happen again, for
her sake. These two said more with eyes than lips. She withdrew her
arm; her face and neck crimsoned.

"There," she said with compelled cheerfulness. "You are all right now.
Finish the wine."

He emptied the tin. It gave him new life. "I always thought," he
answered gravely, "that champagne was worth its weight in gold under
certain conditions. These are the conditions."

Iris reflected, with elastic rebound from despair to relief, that men
in the lower ranks of life do not usually form theories on the
expensive virtues of the wine of France. But her mind was suddenly
occupied by a fresh disaster.

"Good gracious!" she cried. "The ham is ruined."

It was burnt black. She prepared a fresh supply. When it was ready,
Jenks was himself again. They ate in silence, and shared the remains of
the bottle. The man idly wondered what was the _plat du jour_ at
the Savoy that evening. He remembered that the last time he was there
he had called for _Jambon de York aux épinards_ and half a pint of
Heidseck.

"_Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currant_," he thought.
By a queer trick of memory he could recall the very page in Horace
where this philosophical line occurs. It was in the eleventh epistle of
the first book. A smile illumined his tired face.