gulps. By the time he reached the fifteenth glass, his
face was tomato red and his eyes were glassy. He was
making one silly remark after another. and Howard
was countering. I could see Madame Senetsky losing
her patience with them.
Finally it ended and we went on to the food. By
the end of the evening, I felt stuffed. I saw Steven had
gown sleepy. His eyelids were practically shut. We
finished the meal with a dessert called Chocolate
Mousse Le Pain Perdu, which was a bread pudding
topped with a caramel sauce. It was all delicious and I
ate far too much. I was actually somewhat nauseous at
the end of the meal. I wanted to get up to my room as
soon as possible, but when we were excused. Madame
Senetsky asked me to stay.
Because of the tone of Madame Senetsky's voice, the girls looked at me with pity as they filed out. Madame Senetsky thanked Monsieur Rai-ribald
and then, after he left, she turn
ed to me.
"How dare you come down to one of my formal
dinners looking so unkempt? Did I not impress upon
you how important presentation is in our world?" "I--"
"Did I not stress that when you are a Senetsky
student, you are my representative, and what you do
reflects directly back on me?"
"I'm sorry," I began. "I was tired and I--" "Wipe off that lipstick," she ordered, but before
I could, she stepped forward and did it herself with a
silk napkin. Roughly, too,
"There are no excuses for failure in our world."
she snapped before I could offer any explanation.
"One either is successful or not. Excuses, mitigating