"Me!" she scorned. "You ain't got no hold on me no more. Come in and try it!"
The man hesitated.
"Come on!" she taunted.
"I ain't coming in, Millie," he answered. "I didn't come up to come in. I just come up to tell you I was sorry."
She laughed.
"I didn't know you was there, Millie," the man continued. "If I'd knowed you was with the Forty Flirts, I wouldn't have took the boy there. And I come up to tell you so."
Overcome by a sudden and agonizing recollection of the scene, she put her hands to her face.
"And I come up to tell you something else," the acrobat continued, speaking gently. "I tell you, Millie, you better look out. If you ain't careful, you'll lose him for good. He took it hard, Millie. Hard! It broke the little fellow all up. It hurt him—awful!"
She began to walk the floor. In the room the light was failing. It was growing dark—an angry portent—over the roofs of the opposite city.
"Do you want him back?" the man asked.