No answer.
"You won't promise?"
"No—because I don't intend to. I'm doing the best I can."
"You think I'm a good thing. You think I'll take anything off you, because I'm stuck on you—and appreciate that you ain't on the same level with the rest of these heifers. Well—I'll not let any woman con me. I never have. I never will. And I'll make you realize that you're not square with me. I'll let you get a taste of life as it is when a girl hasn't got a friend with a pull."
"As you please," said Susan indifferently. "I don't in the least care what happens to me."
"We'll see about that," cried he, enraged. "I'll give you a week to brace up in."
The look he shot at her by way of finish to his sentence was menacing enough. But she was not disturbed; these signs of anger tended to confirm her in her sense of security from him. For it was wholly unlike the Freddie Palmer the rest of the world knew, to act in this irresolute and stormy way. She knew that Palmer, in his fashion, cared for her—better still, liked her—liked to talk with her, liked to show—and to develop—the aspiring side of his interesting, unusual nature for her benefit.
A week passed, during which she did not see him. But she heard that he was losing on both the cards and the horses and was drinking wildly. A week—ten days—then——
One night, as she came out of a saloon a block or so down Seventh
Avenue from Forty-second, a fly cop seized her by the arm.
"Come along," said he roughly. "You're drinking and soliciting. I've got to clear the streets of some of these tarts. It's got so decent people can't move without falling over 'em."