Oliver put her head on one side and looked languishingly at Mendel as she drawled:—
“It’s a pity you haven’t got a nice girl. Then there would be four of us.”
“Don’t be a fool!” snapped Logan. “What does he want with girls at his age?”
Oliver’s lips trembled and she pouted in protest.
“I only thought it would be nice to round off the party. When you’re in love you can’t help wanting everybody else to have some too.”
Mendel was torn between dislike of her and admiration of Logan’s masterful handling of the problem of desire. . . . No nonsense about getting married or falling in love. He saw the woman he wanted and took her and made her his property, and the woman could not but acquiesce, as Oliver had done. In a dozen different ways she acknowledged Logan’s lordship, even in her deliberate efforts to exasperate him. Their relationship seemed to Mendel simple and excellent, and he envied them. How easy his life would become if he could do the same! What freedom there would be in having a woman to throw in her lot with his! It would settle all his difficulties, absolve him from his dependence on his family, and deliver him from the attentions of unworthy women.
“How shall we dress her?” asked Logan.
Mendel took out his sketch-book and drew a rough portrait of Oliver in a gown tight-fitting above the waist and full in the skirt.
“I should look a guy in that,” she said. “It’s nothing like the fashion.”
“You’ve done with fashion,” said Logan. “You’ve done with the world of shops and snobs and bored, idiotic women. You’re above all that now. In the first place there won’t be any money for fashion, and in the second place there’s no room in our kind of life for rubbish. You’re a free woman now, and don’t you forget it, or I’ll knock your head off.”