Felicia stepped close to him.
"I did not want you to come to my house," she began passionately. "I just wanted you to see the lawyer who attends to certain legal matters for me." The little breathless rush of her words fascinated him, the alluring way she slurred her syllables together, the quick staccato with which she paused on short words! At first he hardly grasped what she was saying, so intent was he upon her extraordinary manner of speaking. It made him feel somehow like a child. It irritated and soothed him at the same time. "I did not want you to come here at all." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "It is insulting for you to be in Maman's garden! But now that you're here and Blythe is here and I am here, why, I think we must talk things ovaire. With this lawyer who lives here with us. It is Blythe's play 'The Magician' that we will talk about. It was in your offices for almost a year and you had it there at least two years before you wrote 'The Juggler,' didn't you? Tell me!"
"The two plays are utterly dissimilar—"
"The two plays are utterly similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have some of those moneys?"
"The two plays were totally dissimilar—" he repeated hotly.
"Felice! Felice!" groaned the Poetry Girl. "You're just wasting your breath! It's no use talking to him! Why, I almost got down on my knees to him! I wept—"
"I shall not weep," said Felicia calmly. "I shall just tell him how vairee simple it would be for him to explain. He can just tell people that it is her play and that some of it is her moneys and then he can give you the money. Oh, you couldn't have understood how bad, bad, bad you made things for her! Even this spring, while you were still getting money from her play, she was poor and sick and almost starving—just like the girl in her 'Magician'—"
She paused eloquently but she never let her eyes leave his. He fidgeted with his hat. He tried to avoid that clear gaze, but whatever the faint stirrings of his conscience might have prompted him to say the blundering but well meaning lawyer prevented. That indiscreet person stepped briskly forward.
"I am one of Miss Modder's legal advisors," he began importantly. "You probably know that we are anticipating bringing another and much stronger action against you. But if you should happen to feel that you wanted to enter into some sort of negotiations for an adjustment of—"
Graemer caught his breath.