A moment later she came gliding back, the fluffy negligée swinging around about her. She handed me a small bank-book opened it, and with a tinted fingernail pointed to the last deposit, a simple credit of five hundred dollars, with the initials of the man who made the entry in the book.
I moved the finger back a bit and looked up the page. There were deposits of two hundred and fifty dollars made with regularity, one each month.
She suddenly realized what I was doing, and jerked the book away.
“Alimony,” I said. “I presume you lose it if you get married again.”
Her eyes were flaming. “You’re the nosiest, most impertinent man I ever met!”
“That alimony of yours,” I went on, “is just about enough for a girl to live on if she’s economical. You might try matrimony once more and get a bigger slice of alimony next time.”
She said, “Someday I’m going to slap your face, Donald Lam.”
“Don’t do it,” I told her. “It brings out the primitive in me. I might sock you.”
“The primitive in you,” she said scornfully. “You haven’t any primitive.”
“Still thinking about that ten-dollar bet? If you could get me to make a pass at you, you’d have ten dollars more to your credit for this month.”