"Just try me back for a month, Max. For a month, Max, and see if—if I don't fix things so they come out right. Gimme a month, Max! Gimme, Max! Gimme! Gimme!"
And with her last remnant of restraint gone, she lay downright at his feet, abandoned to virulent grief, and in her naked agony a shapeless mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr. Zincas, sobbing through her raw throat.
"Just a month, Max! Don't ditch me! Don't! Don't! Don't!"
He looked away from the sorry spectacle of her bubbling lips and great, swollen eyelids.
"Leggo! Leggo my knees!"
"Just a month, Max, just—"
"Leggo! Leggo my knees! Leggo, girl! Ain't you ashamed!"
"Just a month, Max, I—"
"Gad! 'ain't you got no shame, girl! Get up! Leggo! I can't stand this, I tell you. Be a sport and leggo me quiet, Mae. I—I'll send you everything, a—a check that'll surprise you, old girl! Lemme go quiet! Nothing can't change things. Quit your blubbering. It makes me sick, I tell you. Quit your blubbering, old girl, and leggo. Leggo! Leg-go! Leg-go, I say!"
Suddenly he stooped and with a backward turn of her wrist unloosed himself and, while the pain still staggered her, side-stepped the huddle of her body, grasped his hat from the divan and lunged to the door, tugging for a frantic moment with the lock.