Overcome by a sharp weakness, Elim slipped into the chair at his side and faced Rosemary Roselle. The latter gave no sign of his presence. She sat frozen into a species of statuesque rage. “Like you,” the negro continued pompously, “we invited ourselves. All things are free and easy for all. The glorious principle of equality instituted lately has swept away—swept away the inviderous distinctions of class and color. The millenium has come!” He made a grandiloquent gesture with a sooty hand.
“'Ray!” the sodden individual opposite unexpectedly cried.
“We came in,” the other continued, “to uphold our rights as the exponents of—of——”
“You sneaked in the kitchen,” the woman in the doorway interrupted; “and I found you rummaging in the press.”
“Silence!” the orator commanded. “Are you unaware of the dignity now resting on your kinks—hair, hair.” He rose, facing Elim Meikeljohn. “Colonel, gentleman, in a conglomeration where we are all glorious cohevals of—of—”
“Shut up!” said the apostrophized colonel, sudden and fretful. “Get out!”
The orator paused, disconcerted, in the midflow of his figures; and unaccustomed arrogance struggled with habitual servility. “Gentleman,” he repeated, “in a corposity of souls high above all narrow malignations—”
Elim Meikeljohn took his revolver from its holster and laid it before him on the table. The weapon produced an electrical effect on the figure nodding in a drunken stupor. He rose abruptly and uncertain.
“I'm going,” he asserted; “come on, Spout. You can be free and equal better somewheres else.”
The negro hesitated; his hand, Elim saw, moved slightly toward a knife lying by his plate. Elim's fingers closed about the handle of his revolver; he gazed with a steady cold glitter, a thin mouth, at the black masklike countenance above the hectic tie and neat gray suit.