“I see. Then I am inclined to blame him. Failure is a crime, a lamentable weakness. He may suffer a little more till he has found out some means of making you do—right.”
His voice as he spoke was filled with cruelty, though towards the end of the sentence it had sunk so low that he seemed really speaking to himself.
“In that case,” I went on quickly, “I will wear as many clothes as you care to put on me—always excepting a scrubby singlet. They don’t suit me.”
He laughed.
“Be careful,” he said. “You were once mistaken for a woman dressed in contravention of the law.”
“I know. But I should have thought the better expression would have been ‘effeminate.’”
“Would you have raised no objection to be called ‘effeminate’?” he questioned.
“None,” I answered.
“But Deborah does.” Whereat he laughed again. “Since you have gone she has raised a kind of statue to your memory, and there you sit in lonely grandeur, for the atmosphere around is ice. Of late she has taken to dragging every man that she has ever met into this gloomy chamber, and sets them side by side with you.”
“And what next?”