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