She covered her face with her hands; and such a trembling seized her that they fell pitifully away again and showed her features, each distorted. "You mustn't, Charley! Mustn't do that again, not—not for three months—you—you mustn't."
He leaned across the table; his voice was like sleet—cold, thin, cutting: "What's the matter—going to quit?"
"No—no—no!"
"Got another guy you like better?"
"Oh! Oh!"
"A queenie can't quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can't quit me first and get away with it. Ask 'em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain't going to be you. What's the matter? Out with it!"
"Charley, it ain't that—I swear it ain't that!"
"What's hurting you, then?"
"I gotta tell you. We gotta go easy for a little while. We gotta quit doing the rounds for a while till—only for a little while. Three months he said would fix me. A grand old doc he was!
"I been to the clinic, Charley. I hadda go. The cough—the cough was cutting me in two. It ain't like me to go keeling like I did. I never said much about it; but, nights and all, the sweats and the cough and the shooting pains was cutting me in two. We gotta go easy for a while, Charley; just—"