n you're crawling on the floor, Jim, like a slimy dog,
I'll kick you out. Hear me, you pup? What you take my child in there
for?" she cried. "Hear me? Aw, you pup!" she snarled. "You're afraid
to come in!"

"Don't go on, Millie," he warned her. "Don't you go on like that.
Maybe I _will_ come in. And if I do, my girl, it won't be me that'll
be lickin' shoes. It might be _you_!"

"Me!" she scorned. "You ain't got no hold on me no more. Come in and
try it!"

The man hesitated.

"Come on!" she taunted.

"I ain't coming in, Millie," he answered. "I didn't come up to come
in. I just come up to tell you I was sorry."

She laughed.

"I didn't know you was there, Millie," the man continued. "If I'd
knowed you was with the Forty Flirts, I wouldn't have took the boy
there. And I come up to tell you so."

Overcome by a sudden and agonizing recollection of the scene, she put
her hands to her face.

"And I come up to tell you something else," the acrobat continued,
speaking gently. "I tell you, Millie, you better look out. If you
ain't careful, you'll lose him for good. He took it hard, Millie.
Hard! It broke the little fellow all up. It hurt him--awful!"

She began to walk the floor. In the room the light was failing. It
was growing dark--an angry portent--over the roofs of the opposite city.

"Do you want him back?" the man asked.

"Want him back!" she cried.

"Then," said he, his voice soft, grave, "take care!"

"Want him back?" she repeated, beginning, now, by habit, to tear at her
nails. "I got to have him back! He's mine, ain't he? Didn't I bear
him? Didn't I nurse him? Wasn't it me that--that--_made_ him? He's
my kid, I tell you--_mine_! And I want him back! Oh, I want him so!"

The man entered; but the woman seemed not to know it. He regarded her
compassionately.

"That there curate ain't got no right to him," she complained. "_He_
didn't have nothing to do with the boy. It was only me and Dick.
What's he sneaking around here for--taking Dick's boy away? The boy's
half mine and half Dick's. The curate ain't got no share. And now
Dick's dead--and he's _all_ mine! The curate ain't got nothing to do
with it. We don't want no curate here. I raised that boy for myself.
I didn't do it to give him to no curate. What right's he got coming
around here--getting a boy he didn't have no pain to bear or trouble to
raise? I tell you _I_ got that boy. He's mine--and I want him!"