"Lock the door," said Patsie quietly, "and keep the key."
He did so and came back to her side.
"Don't mind what she says," said Patsie scornfully. "She's not ill, she's not hysterical, it's all put on: she knows just what she's doing."
At this Mrs. Drake burst into exaggerated sobs and shrank down into the chair, covering her face with the quilt she clung to, without perception of the grotesqueness of her act.
"Now, you're going to listen to me," said Patsie, striving to remain calm through her anger. "You don't fool me the least bit, so you might just as well listen quietly. I know just how much money you have and every cent of it has been given to you by my father. You are worth over four million dollars, I know that."
"It's not true, that's a lie," said Mrs. Drake with a scream.
"It is true," continued Patsie calmly, "and you know it's true. This house is yours and everything in it. Do you want me to tell you exactly what stocks and bonds you have at the present moment? Shall I have my father come in, too, and tell us in detail just what he has given you all these years? Do you want that?" She waited a moment and added scornfully: "No, I rather guess that is not what you want. I asked you before to help raise a loan to save him from losing what he had. You could have done it: you refused. Now I am asking you to give exactly what I shall give and what Doris will give, $500,000, so there will be nothing, not the slightest reproach against his good name, against the name you bear and I bear. Will you do it or not?"
"You don't know what you are talking about," cried the mother wildly. "It's $500,000 now, it's $500,000 to-morrow and then it's everything. You want me to ruin myself. You think just because he's gone on risking everything, just because he never could be satisfied, that I should suffer, too. You want me to make a pauper of myself. Well, I won't. What right had he to risk money that didn't belong to him? What right have you to reproach me, abuse me?"
Bojo attempted to burst in on the stream of meaninglessness and repeated phrases. He, too, saw through the assumption of hysteria, shielding behind a cloak of weakness a cold and covetous woman.
"My dear Mrs. Drake," he said icily, "you are proud of your position in society. Let me put this to you. Don't you realize that if your husband fails for a million and a half and you continue living as you have lived that it will be a public scandal? Don't you realize what people will say?"