So he beat her very severely, and blacked her eye, and dragged her by the gorgeous dressing-gown into the next room. As he dragged her she slipped out of the gown and they saw her for an instant white as any lily before he slammed the door on her and came out again. Joe and Chihuahua yelled with laughter, and even Skookum roused up to chuckle a little. He had been asleep, lying with his head on the insensible body of an unowned klootchman, who was a relative of Annie's. His own klootchman still sat in the corner, every now and again chanting dismally of the woes of Annawillee. Joe and Chihuahua spoke in Spanish.
"She's a beauty, and George Quin will want her," said Chihuahua.
"And he'll have her too, by the Mother of God," said Joe. "But klootchmen are no good. My woman up town she cries too much. And as for her husband——"
He indulged in some Spanish blasphemy on the subject of that poor creature's man.
They slapped Pete on the back when he sat down again, and said he knew how to serve a saucy muchacha. And Joe sang a beautiful old Spanish love song with amazing feeling and then went away. But the melancholy of the song haunted poor Pete's heart, and he went to his wife and found her crouched on the floor sobbing and as naked as when she was born. And Pete cried too and said that he loved her.
But she still cried, for he had torn the lovely dressing-gown with its gorgeous garden of tulips. She hugged it to her beautiful bosom as if it were a child.
In the outer room they all slept, and even Annawillee ceased moaning.
The night was calm and wonderful and as silent as death.