Rosie felt more helpless, somehow, than ever. “Why not?” she asked as bravely and impertinently as she could.
Coleman answered with another question. “Why should I?”
“It would be natural curiosity.”
“But I know all I want to know,” he said. “You are a woman, or, at any rate, you have all the female stigmata. Not too sumptuously well-developed, let me add. You have no wooden legs. You have eyelids that flutter up and down over your eyes like a moving shutter in front of a signalling lamp, spelling out in a familiar code the letters: A.M.O.R., and not, unless I am very much mistaken, those others: C.A.S.T.I.T.A.S. You have a mouth that looks as though it knew how to taste and how to bite. You....”
Rosie jumped up. “I’m going away,” she said.
Coleman leaned back in his chair and hallooed with laughter. “Bite, bite, bite,” he said. “Thirty-two times.” And he opened and shut his mouth as fast as he could, so that his teeth clicked against one another with a little dry, bony noise. “Every mouthful thirty-two times. That’s what Mr. Gladstone said. And surely Mr. Gladstone”—he rattled his sharp, white teeth again—“surely Mr. Gladstone should know.”
“Good-bye,” said Rosie from the door.
“Good-bye,” Coleman called back; and immediately afterwards jumped to his feet and made a dash across the room towards her.
Rosie uttered a cry, slipped through the door and, slamming it behind her, ran across the vestibule and began fumbling with the latches of the outer door. It wouldn’t open, it wouldn’t open. She was trembling; fear made her feel sick. There was a rattling at the door behind her. There was a whoop of laughter, and then the Cossack’s hands were on her arms, his face came peering over her shoulder, and the blond beard dabbled with blood prickled against her neck and face.
“Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t!” she implored, turning away her head. Then all at once she began violently crying.