"I—I—"
"There ain't a man livin' would stand for your long face and naggin'! If you don't like my banking-hours and my game and the company I keep you quit, kiddo! Quit! Do you hear?"
"Will—I—quit? Well—"
"Yeh; I been up to the Crescent Confetti—every night this week, just like you say! I been round live wires, where there ain't no long, white faces shoving board bills and whining the daylights out of me."
"Oh, you—you ain't nothing but—"
"Sure, I been up there! I can get two laughs for every long face you pull on me. You quit if you want to, kiddo—there ain't no strings to you. Quit—and the sooner the better!" Mr. Trimp grasped his wife by her taut wrists and jerked her to him until her head fell backward and the breath jumped out of her throat in a choke. "Quit—and the sooner the better!"
"Lemme go! Lem-me-go!"
He tightened his hold and inclined toward her, so close that their faces almost touched. With his hot clutches on her wrists and his hot breath in her face it seemed to her that his eyes fused into one huge Cyclopean circle that spun and spun in the center of his forehead, like a fiery Catharine Wheel against a night sky.
"Bah! You little whiteface, you! You played a snide trick on me, anyway—lost your looks the second month and went dead like a punctured tire! Quit when you want to—there ain't no strings. Quit now!"
He flung her from him, so that she staggered backward four steps and struck her right cheek sharply against the mantel corner. A blue-glass vase fell to the hearth and was shattered. With the salt of fray on his lips, he kicked at the overturned chair and slammed a closet door so that the windows rattled. A carpet-covered hassock lay in his path, and he hurled it across the floor. Goldie edged toward the wardrobe, hugging the wall like one who gropes in the dark.