"Who are you?" he said, regarding her with the intense squint of one in need of glasses.
She felt her power over the moment, and with her old slant for it began to dramatize.
"I'm the grist being ground between yesterday and to-day. Sometimes I think I must be some sort of an unfinished symphony which it will take another generation to complete. I am a river and I long to be a sea. I must be the grape between the vine of my family and the wine of my progeny. That's it, I'm the grape fermenting!"
Then she felt absurd and looked absurd and stood there with the quick fizzing spurt of exultation died down into a state of bathos.
"Let me stay on here on my terms, Mr. Visigoth," she finished with a sort of broken-wing lameness of voice.
"What terms?"
"The terms you have been generous enough not to violate up to now. I've the most glorious reason for wanting to make good that a girl—a woman could have. I don't think the career stuff, as you once called it, is rankling any more. I'm suddenly glad and quiet about my job. Let me stay on. Let me make myself indispensable to this growing, interesting enterprise of yours. Why, even watching the letters grow in numbers and importance, and using the little individuality in handling them that you are beginning to allow me, is a game worth playing! I'm like a bad girl who has been spanked by life and is all chastened and ready to be good. If you are the clever business man I think you are, you'll let me stay, Mr. Visigoth, on my terms."
There was a shine to her there in the half light, probably because her eyes were wide and the muscles of her face lifted so that her teeth showed, but not in a smile.
"I played the game on your terms, Mr. Visigoth; now meet me on mine."
"Put your cards on the table, then; no fine flights of speech either.
Who are you?"