Meanwhile a change had taken place in Zoë: she had suddenly become more charming than ever. Her gentleness and sweetness had become conspicuously augmented, and she was so kind and sweet-mannered to all, including the Wild Man of Milo (whom she had formerly avoided through instinctive fear), that Bat took greater heart and swore to win her, though he might have to wade through oceans of Sampey blood. Mark this: Stake not too much on a woman's condescension to you; it may come through love for another.
Zoë was innocent, honest, and confiding. Innocence measures the strength of faith. The charm of faith is its absurdity. Zoë believed in Sampey.
Sampey, grown surprisingly bold and self-reliant, named his terms to Castellani—a half-interest in the business—and Castellani, swear and bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private apartments in celebration of the new arrangement, and presently he and Zoë and Sampey were enjoying a very choice meal. Zoë was dazzlingly radiant and pretty, but a certain strange constraint sat between her and Sampey. Once, when she dropped her napkin and Sampey picked it up, his hand accidentally touched one of her daintily slippered feet, and his blushes were painful to see.
While they were thus engaged, Bat, without ceremony, burst in upon them, his face aglow and his eyes flashing triumph. He carried in his hand a small box, which he rudely thrust under their noses. When Sampey saw it he turned deathly pale and shrank back, powerless to move or speak.
"I ketcha da scound!" exclaimed Bat, shaking his finger in the cowering Sampey's face. "I watch 'im; I ketcha da scound! He play you da dirtee tr-r-icks!"
The Wild Man of Milo placed the box on the table and raised the lid. Within appeared a number of curious, small, cup-shaped trinkets of opaque white glass, each marked in the centre with an annular band of color surrounding a centre of clear glass, the range of colors being great, and the trinkets arranged in pairs according to color. There were also a vial labelled "cocaine" and a small camel's-hair brush.
"You looka me," resumed Hoolagaloo, greatly excited. "I maka mine eye changa colah, lika da scounda Samp."
With that he dipped the brush into the vial and applied it to his eyes. Then he picked up two of the curious little glass cups, and slipped them, one at a time, over his eyeballs and under his eyelids, where they fitted snugly. They were artificial eyes which Sampey had had made to cover his natural eyeballs on occasion. Bat struck a mock-tragic attitude and hissed:
"Diavolo!"
By a strange accident he had picked out two which were not mates. One of his eyes was a soft, pale, limpid amber and the other a fierce and insurrectionary red. These, with his tufted nose and his tragic attitude, gave him an appearance so grotesque and hideous that Zoë, after springing to her feet and throwing her arms wildly aloft, fell in a dead faint into Sampey's arms.