all these years what you wasn't man
enough to pay for. That's what we women are; we're the free lunch that
you men get with a glass of beer, and what the hell do you care which
garbage-pail what's left of us lands in after you're done with us!"

"Cut that barroom talk around here if--"

"Good enough for six years, wasn't I, to lay down like a door-mat for
you to walk on, eh? Good enough. Good enough when it came to giving up
chunks of my own flesh and blood when your burns was like hell's fire
on your back and all your old woman could do to help was throw a swoon
every time she looked at you. Good enough to--"

"Gad! I knew it! I knew it! Knew you'd show your yellow streak."

She fell to moaning in her hands. "No, no, Max, I--"

"Bah! you can't throw that up to me, though. I never wanted it! I
could have bought it off any one of them poor devils that hang around
hospitals, as many inches off any one of 'em as I wanted. I never wanted
them to graft it on me off you. I told the doctor I didn't. I knew you'd
be throwing it up to me some day. If I'd bought it off a stranger I--I
wouldn't have that limp in front of me always to--to rub things in. I
knew you'd throw it up to me. I--Gad! I knew it! I knew it!"

"No, no, Max, I didn't mean it. You--you just got me so crazy I don't
know what I'm saying. Sure, I--I made you take it off me. I wanted 'em
to cut it off me to graft on your burns because it--it was like finding
a new way of saying how--how I love you, Max. Every drop of blood was
like--like I could see for myself how--how I loved you, Max. I--"

"Oh, my God!" he said, folded his arms atop the piano, and let his head
fall into them. "Oh, my God!"

"That's how I love you, Max. That's how you--you're all in the world I
got, Max. That's why I--can't, just can't let you go, dear. Don't throw
me over, Max. Cut the comedy and come down to earth. You 'ain't had a
holy spell for two years now since the old woman sniffed me and wanted
to marry you off to that cloak-and-suit buyer with ten thou in the bank
and a rush of teeth to the front. You remember how we laffed, dearie,
that night we seen her at the show? Don't let your old lady--"

"Cut that, I tell you!"

"You'd be a swell gink hitting the altar trail with a bunch of white
satin, wouldn't you? At your time of life, forty and set in your ways,
you'd have a swell time landing a young frisky one and trying to learn
one of them mother's darlings how to rub in your h