“We have met, and their time has come,” he began, looking up into her eyes. “The partnership between me and my gentleman has to be ripped up. There's no room for him where we two are. Why, he would shoot me like a dog! Don't you worry. This will settle it not later than tonight!”
He tapped his folded leg below the knee, and was surprised, flattered, by the lighting up of her face, which stooped towards him eagerly and remained expectant, the lips girlishly parted, red in the pale face, and quivering in the quickened drawing of her breath.
“You marvel, you miracle, you man's luck and joy—one in a million! No, the only one. You have found your man in me,” he whispered tremulously. “Listen! They are having their last talk together; for I'll do for your gentleman, too, by midnight.”
Without the slightest tremor she murmured, as soon as the tightening of her breast had eased off and the words would come:
“I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry—with him.”
The pause, the tone, had all the value of meditated advice.
“Good, thrifty girl!” he laughed low, with a strange feline gaiety, expressed by the undulating movement of his shoulders and the sparkling snap of his oblique eyes. “You are still thinking about the chance of that swag. You'll make a good partner, that you will! And, I say, what a decoy you will make! Jee-miny!”
He was carried away for a moment, but his face darkened swiftly.
“No! No reprieve. What do you think a fellow is—a scarecrow? All hat and clothes and no feeling, no inside, no brain to make fancies for himself? No!” he went on violently. “Never in his life will he go again into that room of yours—never any more!”
A silence fell. He was gloomy with the torment of his jealousy, and did not even look at her. She sat up and slowly, gradually, bent lower and lower over him, as if ready to fall into his arms. He looked up at last, and checked this droop unwittingly.