"We deal punishment, not receive it. It would not worry me in the least to leave you lying here upon the floor."
I did not believe this, but I did not stop to weigh the question then; I was too much struck by a word he had used.
"Deal punishment?" I repeated. "Are you punishing me? Is that why I am here?"
He laughed and held out his glass to mine.
"You enjoy being sarcastic," he observed. "Well, it gives a spice to conversation, I own. Talk is apt to be dull without it."
For reply I struck the glass from his hand; it fell and shivered, and he looked for the moment really distressed.
"I had rather you had struck me," he remarked, "for I have an answer for an injury like that; but for a broken glass—" He sighed and looked dolefully at the pieces on the floor.
Mortified and somewhat ashamed, I put down my own glass.
"You should not have exasperated me," I cried, and walked away beyond temptation, to the other side of the room.
His spirits had received a dampener, but in a few minutes he seized upon a cigar and began smoking; as the wreaths curled over his head he began to talk, and this time it was on subjects totally foreign to myself and even to himself. It was good talk; that I recognized, though I hardly listened to what he said. I was asking myself what time it had now got to be, and what was the meaning of my incarceration, till my brain became weary and I could scarcely distinguish the topic he discussed. But he kept on for all my seeming, and indeed real, indifference, kept on hour after hour in a monologue he endeavored to make interesting, and which probably would have been so if the time and occasion had been fit for my enjoying it. As it was, I had no ear for his choicest phrases, his subtlest criticisms, or his most philosophic disquisitions. I was wrapped up in self and my cruel disappointment, and when in a certain access of frenzy I leaped to my feet and took a look at the watch still lying on the table, and saw it was four o'clock in the morning, I gave a bound of final despair, and throwing myself on the floor, gave myself up to the heavy sleep that mercifully came to relieve me.