She did not move. Apparently she did not change expression. Yet he, speaking half banteringly, felt some frightful catastrophe within her. "You are—poor?" she said in her usual quiet way.
"We are poor," corrected he. "I have at present only a thousand dollars a month—a little more, but not enough to talk about."
She did not move or change expression. Yet he felt that her heart, her blood were going on again.
"Are you—angry?" he asked.
"A thousand dollars a month seems an awful lot of money to me," she said.
"It's nothing—nothing to what we'll soon have. Trust me." And back into his eyes flashed their former look. "I've been sick. I'm well again. I shall get what I want. If you want anything, you've only to ask for it. I'll get it. I know how. . . . I don't prey, myself—I've no fancy for the brutal sports. But I teach lions how to prey, and I make them pay for the lessons." He laughed with an effervescing of young vitality and self-confidence that made him look handsome and powerful. "In the future they'll have to pay still higher prices."
She was looking at him with weary, wondering, pathetic eyes that gazed from the pallor of her dead-white face mysteriously.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"I was listening," replied she.
"Doesn't it make you happy—what you are going to have?"