Part 3 (1/2)
”I wish you would,” said he, drawing a handful from his jacket pocket. ”I should be so much happier.”
”You can hardly be such a gambler,” she laughed.
”Oh, no! It's not that at all. Gambling bores me.”
”Why do you play, then?”
”I don't. I staked that louis because I wanted to see whether I should be interested. I wasn't, as I began to think about the guns. Have you had breakfast?”
Again Zora was startled. A sane man does not talk of breakfasting at nine o'clock in the evening. But if he were a lunatic perhaps it were wise to humor him.
”Yes,” she said. ”Have you?”
”No. I've only just got up.”
”Do you mean to say you've been asleep all day?”
”What's the noisy day made for?”
”Let us sit down,” said Zora.
They found one of the crimson couches by the wall vacant, and sat down.
Zora regarded him curiously.
”Why should you be happier if I took care of your money?”
”I shouldn't spend it. I might meet a man who wanted to sell me a gas-engine.”
”But you needn't buy it.”
”These fellows are so persuasive, you see. At Rotterdam last year, a man made me buy a second-hand dentist's chair.”
”Are you a dentist?” asked Zora.
”Lord, no! If I were I could have used the horrible chair.”
”What did you do with it?”
”I had it packed up and despatched, carriage paid, to an imaginary person at Singapore.”
He made this announcement in his tired, gentle manner, without the flicker of a smile. He added, reflectively--
”That sort of thing becomes expensive. Don't you find it so?”
”I would defy anybody to sell me a thing I didn't want,” she replied.
”Ah, that,” said he with a glance of wistful admiration, ”that is because you have red hair.”
If any other strange male had talked about her hair, Zora Middlemist would have drawn herself up in Junoesque majesty and blighted him with a glance.
She had done with men and their compliments forever. In that she prided herself on her Amazonianism. But she could not be angry with the inconclusive being to whom she was talking. As well resent the ingenuous remarks of a four-year-old child.