e ain't no long, white
faces shoving board bills and whining the daylights out of me."

"Oh, you--you ain't nothing but--"

"Sure, I been up there! I can get two laughs for every long face you
pull on me. You quit if you want to, kiddo--there ain't no strings to
you. Quit--and the sooner the better!" Mr. Trimp grasped his wife by her
taut wrists and jerked her to him until her head fell backward and the
breath jumped out of her throat in a choke. "Quit--and the sooner the
better!"

"Lemme go! Lem-me-go!"

He tightened his hold and inclined toward her, so close that their faces
almost touched. With his hot clutches on her wrists and his hot breath
in her face it seemed to her that his eyes fused into one huge Cyclopean
circle that spun and spun in the center of his forehead, like a fiery
Catharine Wheel against a night sky.

"Bah! You little whiteface, you! You played a snide trick on me,
anyway--lost your looks the second month and went dead like a punctured
tire! Quit when you want to--there ain't no strings. Quit now!"

He flung her from him, so that she staggered backward four steps and
struck her right cheek sharply against the mantel corner. A blue-glass
vase fell to the hearth and was shattered. With the salt of fray on his
lips, he kicked at the overturned chair and slammed a closet door so
that the windows rattled. A carpet-covered hassock lay in his path, and
he hurled it across the floor. Goldie edged toward the wardrobe, hugging
the wall like one who gropes in the dark.

"If you're right bright, kiddo, you'll keep out of my way. You got me
crazy to-night--crazy! Do you hear me, you little--"

"My hat!"

He flung it to her from its peg, with her jacket, so that they fell
crumpled at her feet.

"You're called on your bluff this time, little one. This is one night
it's quits for you--and I ain't drunk, neither!"

She crowded her rampant hair, flowing as Ophelia's, into her cheap
little boyish hat and fumbled into her jacket. A red welt, shaped like a
tongue of flame, burned diagonally down her right cheek.

"Keep out of my way--you! You got me crazy to-night--crazy to-night!"

He watched her from the opposite side of the room with lowered head,
like a bull lunging for onslaught.

She moved toward the door with the rigidity of an automaton doll, her
magnetized eyes never leaving his reddening face and her hands groping
ahead. Her mouth was moist and no older than a child's; but her skin
dead, as