"What is it you really want?" he asked, perfectly willing to see the comedy to its end.
"A home ... with you. I know, Robert, that I was a wretch in those days. But the world over here ... men ... the temptation ... the primordial instinct of woman to fight man with any weapon she can lay a hand to!... Won't you take me back and forgive?"
"Take care, Berta! Don't waste those tears! In your eyes they are pearls without price. Don't waste them on me."
"Then you won't forgive?"
"Forgive? What manner of fool have you written me down? Forgive! I gave you an honest man's love ... and you picked my pockets! I would not give two coppers to place on your dead eyes. Take you home? Innocent child!"
"Ah! Then it is war?"
"War to the end, pretty cobra! You don't suppose I came here with any other idea?"
How she hated this man! Hated him because she had never beaten him, never seen him cringe nor heard him plead. She, too, would remember that night in Yokohama, six years gone. After the blow, silence, not a word or a look. Stonily he had packed up his belongings and gone to the Yokohama Club, whence he had gone aboard a cruiser in the morning. Since that moment until this she had never laid eyes on him. Every six months a check came; but even that lacked his signature—a draft from Cook's. War! So be it. He would learn when she began to turn the screws.
"You will take me home and acknowledge me," she whipped back at him.