Max! Gimme, Max!
Gimme! Gimme!"

And with her last remnant of restraint gone, she lay downright at his
feet, abandoned to virulent grief, and in her naked agony a shapeless
mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of
abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and
broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and
her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her
corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her
lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae
Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr.
Zincas, sobbing through her raw throat.

"Just a month, Max! Don't ditch me! Don't! Don't! Don't!"

He looked away from the sorry spectacle of her bubbling lips and great,
swollen eyelids.

"Leggo! Leggo my knees!"

"Just a month, Max, just--"

"Leggo! Leggo my knees! Leggo, girl! Ain't you ashamed!"

"Just a month, Max, I--"

"Gad! 'ain't you got no shame, girl! Get up! Leggo! I can't stand
this, I tell you. Be a sport and leggo me quiet, Mae. I--I'll send you
everything, a--a check that'll surprise you, old girl! Lemme go quiet!
Nothing can't change things. Quit your blubbering. It makes me sick,
I tell you. Quit your blubbering, old girl, and leggo. Leggo! Leg-go!
Leg-go, I say!"

Suddenly he stooped and with a backward turn of her wrist unloosed
himself and, while the pain still staggered her, side-stepped the huddle
of her body, grasped his hat from the divan and lunged to the door,
tugging for a frantic moment with the lock.

On her knees beside the piano, in quite the attitude he had flung her,
leaning forward on one palm and amid the lacy whirl of her train, Mae
Munroe listened to his retreating steps; heard the slam of a lower door.

You who recede before the sight of raw emotions with every delicacy
shamed, do not turn from the spectacle of Mae Munroe prone there on the
floor, her bosom upheaved and her mouth too loose. When the heart is
torn the heart bleeds, whether under cover of culture and a boiled
shirt-front or without shame and the wound laid bare. And Mae Munroe,
who lay there, simple soul, only knew or cared that her heart lay
quivering like a hurt thing, and for the sobs that bubbled too frankly
to her lips had no concern.

But after a while they ceased of exhaustion, and she rose to her feet,
her train threatening to throw her; walked