"I'll take your bet!"
The retort came with such a ring of her voice that he was startled.
Before he could recover, she went on: "Go out and get that baby for me,
Vance. I want it."
He tossed his cigarette out of the window.
"Don't drop into one of your headstrong moods, sis. This is nonsense."
"That's why I want to do it. I'm tired of playing the man. I've had enough to fill my mind. I want something to fill my arms and my heart."
She drew up her hands with a peculiar gesture toward her shallow, barren bosom, and then her brother found himself silenced. At the same time he was a little irritated, for there was an imputation in her speech that she had been carrying the burden which his own shoulders should have supported. Which was so true that he could not answer, and therefore he cast about for some way of stinging her.
"I thought you were going to escape the sentimental period, Elizabeth.
But sooner or later I suppose a woman has to pass through it."
A spot of color came in her sallow cheek.
"That's sufficiently disagreeable, Vance."
A sense of his cowardice made him rise to conceal his confusion.