"’He’s rich,’ she says to me. ’He’ll pay. Don’t you know enough to stick him. I’ll knock off fifty cents, you say all right. He’ll pay it. And tomorrow you come round and I’ll give you three dollars.’ Now wot do you think of that? Say. Do you know wot I did?"
"I spit at her. I said ’You ....’" (Among the other epithets were "cross-eyed" and "hook-nosed.")
"Well—how much did you pay at last?" I asked.
"I think," said Norman, "she could have got it for the seventeen...."
"Sure, I could," Nina interrupted. "But he was in a hurry and gave the ... thief twenty. It...."
The lights went down, the curtain up and a woman, whom I would not have trusted to be kind to her own children, brought on a troupe of pitiable dogs. Nina turned back to watch the stage.
"So you think," Norman reverted to the former subject, "that I ought to marry her?"
"If you have any reasons why I shouldn’t that are not pure snobbishness, I’d like to hear them."
"Good God," I said. "You’re not seriously thinking of that, are you?"
"Hardly. But the idea has occurred to me. Why are you so frightened by it?"
It is strange what illogical creatures we are! Up to that moment I had been sorry for Nina. Every day I liked her more. And I saw with a sore heart the wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her new master. Love is one of the most primeval passions of the race. It is likely to be stronger—grander or more devastating—with primitive people than with those of us who have been civilized away from the parent type. I knew that Nina was falling in love with Norman in a way no woman of our class ever could. He had taken her into a fairy land and she could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement.
But the hint of the possibility of his really acting the part of the fairy prince, switched me about entirely. Nina became a negligible quantity. I worried only for him. It is needless to repeat the arguments against such a marriage which flooded me. They will occur to anyone. But to oppose it—I knew Norman too well—to try that.
"Perhaps that would be the best solution of the matter—for her."
"Well. You’re in a better position than I to decide that."
He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear. Suddenly she forgot the stage and getting up—reckless of all observers,—came back and kissed him.