So resonant was the cry that Loftus turned, not to her but to the window. He closed it. But already the cry had passed elsewhere.
From regions beyond a fat negress waddled hurriedly in. Her eyes rolled whitely from the girl to Loftus and then again to the girl.
"Are you sick, miss?"
"Go away," said Loftus, "there is nothing the matter."
"Nothing?" exclaimed Marie. "Nothing!" she repeated in a higher key. "Nothing!" Then, visibly, anger enveloped her. "Do you call it nothing to be cheated and decoyed? Nothing to have faith and love and be gammoned of them by a living lie, by a perjury in flesh and blood? Is that what you call nothing? Is it? Then tell me what something is?"
At the moment she stared at Loftus, her lips still moving, her breast heaving, her small hands clenched, her face very white. And Loftus stared at her. In the vehemence and contempt of her anger he did not recognize at all the kitten of the year before. But it was very vulgar, he decided.
That vulgarity Blanche complicated at once. "What has he done, miss?" she asked, her hands on her hips.
"Done?" Marie echoed. "He has made me drink of shame. Now, tired of that, he is going."
"Not to leave you, miss?"
"To leave me for another woman."