“No, no, you don’t.  You’re just kidding me, Max, like you used to when you wanted to tease me and throw a scare in me that your mother was wise about the flat.  Quit your kidding, Max, and take me in your arms and sing me ‘Maizie you’re a Daisie’ like you used to after—­after we had a little row.  Lemme hear you call me ‘Maizie,’ dear, so I’ll know you’re only kidding.  I’m a bum sport, dearie.  I—­I never could stand for guying.  Cut the comedy, dear.”

She leaned to him with her lips twisted and dried in their frenzy to belie his words, but with little else to indicate that her heart lay ticking against her breast like a clock that makes its hour in half-time.

“Quit guying, Max, for God’s sake!  You—­you got me feeling sick clear down inside of me.  Cut it, dear.  Too much is enough.”

Her dress rustled with the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of the back of his chair.

“Now, now, Mae; come, come!  You’re a sensible woman.  I ain’t stuck on this business any more than you are.  You ought to have let me stay away and just let it die out instead of raking up things like this.  Come, buck up, old girl!  Don’t make it any harder than it’s got to be.  These things happen every day.  This is business.  There, there!  Now!  Now!”

The sudden bout of tenderness brought the tears stinging to her eyes and she was for ingratiating herself into his embrace, but he withdrew, edging toward the piano with an entire flattening of tone.

“Now, now, Mae, I tell you that you got to cut it.  It would have been better if you had just let the old cat die, You oughtn’t to tried that gag to get me here to-night.  You’ll get a lot more out of me if you do it dry, girl.  A crying woman can drive me out of the house quicker ’n plague, and you ought to know it by now.”

She sat down suddenly, feeling queasy.

“Now, now, old girl, buck up!  Be a sport!”

“Gimme a drink, Max.  I—­Just a swallow.  I—­I’m all right.”  And she squeezed her eyes tight shut to blink out the tears.

He handed her a tumbler from the table, keeping his head averted, and after a bit she fell to sobbing and choking and trembling.

“It’s her!  It’s your old woman.  She’s been chloroforming you with a lot of dope talk about hitting the altar rail with a bunch of white satin with a good fat wad sewed in the lining.  It’s your old—­”

“Cut that!”

“It’s your old woman.  She—­she don’t know you like I do, Max.  She—­”

“Now, now, Mae!  You knew this had to come sooner or later, I ’ain’t never lied, have I?  Right here in this room ’ain’t you told me a dozen times you’d let me go quietly when the time came?  ’Ain’t you?”

“I never thought you meant it, Max.  You don’t mean it now.  Don’t let your old woman upset you, dear.  What she don’t know won’t hurt her.  Stick around her a little more if you think she’s got a hunch about me and the flat.  But she ’ain’t, dearie; there ain’t a chance in the world she’s got a hunch about me.  Don’t let her make a mollycoddle out of you, Max.  That old woman don’t know enough about life and things to—­”