“If you don’t go,” she said, “I shall have to shoot you and leave you here kicking on the carpet.”
“In God’s name, Marya!” he cried hoarsely, “who is it you shall kill at the hall?”
“I shall kill Sondheim and Bromberg and Kastner, I hope. What of it?”
“But––if I go to-night––the others will say I did it! I can’t run away if you do such thing! I can not go into Mexico but they shall arrest me before I am at the border–––”
“Eurasian pig, I shall admit the killing!” she said with a green gleam in her eyes that perhaps was laughter.
“Yes, my Marya,” he explained in agony, the sweat pouring from his temples, “but if they think me your accomplice they shall arrest me. Me––I can not wait––I shall be ruined if I am arrest! You do not comprehend. I have not said it to you how it is that I am compel to travel with some money which––which is not––my own.”
Marya looked at him for a long while. Suddenly she flung the pistol into a corner, threw back her head while peal on peal of laughter rang out in the room.
“A thief,” she said, fairly holding her slender sides between gemmed fingers: “––Just a Levantine thief, after all! Not a thing to shoot. Not a man. No! But a giant cockroach from the tropics. Ugh! Too large to place one’s foot upon!–––”
She came leisurely forward, halted, inspected him with laughing insolence: