Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed it, "to forget." Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order to the portress's little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady's bare legs.

Every conversation led up to one subject--the beastliness of the men.

Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan.

She could not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of his sayings and his doings.
But Satin, like a good-natured girl, would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of silent sulking.

In her desire to be always talking about these things Nana had got to tell of every slap that he dealt her.