"Love!" he jeered. "Well, call it that—no matter. Those tapestries have got to go back—do you hear?"
"Yes—you needn't shout, dear. Certainly they'll go back."
"You say 'certainly,' but you've no intention of sending them back. You think this'll blow over, that you'll wheedle me round as you have a hundred times. But I tell you, this time, what I say goes!"
"What's the trouble, Joe? You were never like this before."
He was gnawing at his thin gray mustache and was breathing heavily. "When I married you I was a decent sort of fellow. I had a sense of honor and a disposition to be honest. You—you've made me into a bawd. I tell you, not the lowest creature that parades the streets of the slums is viler than I. That's what you and love—love!—have done for me. My wife and love! God, woman, what you have made me do to get money for those greedy hands of yours! Now, listen to me. You evidently didn't listen last night when I told you my plans. No matter. Here's the point. I'm going to sell out once more—going to play the traitor for as big stakes as ever tempted a man. Then, I'll make the career I once dreamed of making, and you will be second to no woman in the land. But, no more extravagance."
"I always knew you'd be rich and famous," she cried, clasping her hands and looking the radiant child.
"Famous, but not rich. I'm not playing for money this time. And we're not going to have much money hereafter. I've thought it all out. We're going to move into a smaller house; all your junk is to be sold, and what little money it'll bring we'll put by."
She seemed to be freezing. The baby look died out of her face. Her eyes became hard, her mouth cruel. "I don't understand," she said.
"Yes, you do, madam," he retorted. "You need not waste time in scheming or in working your schemes. I've thought it all out. You were driving me straight to ruin; and, when you got me there, if I hadn't conveniently died or blown my brains out, you'd have divorced me and fastened on some one else. I think that, like me, you used to be decent. You've been led on and on until you've come pretty near to losing all human feeling. Well, it's to be a right about, this instant. I'm going back—and you've got to go back with me."
There was a note in his voice, an expression in his eyes that disquieted her; but she had ruled him so long, had softened him from the appearance of strength into plastic weakness so often, that she saw before her simply a harder task than usual, perhaps the hardest task she had yet had.