evening paper (Republican), and undipped his steel-rimmed glasses from the great blade of his nose.
She came over with sprightly gait to the empty hearth, clasping her wrapper tightly with veinous hands.
Swiftly, with a gay leer, she opened the garment, disclosing her thin legs, silkshod, and her lumpy hips, gaudily clothed in ruffled drawers of blue silk.
“Aren’t they pretty?” she twittered invitingly but obscurely. Then, as he took an eager stride forward, she skipped away like a ponderous maenad soliciting Bacchic pursuit.
“A pair of pippins,” he agreed, inclusively.
After this, she prepared breakfast for him. From Dixieland, Eliza surveyed them with a bitter eye. He had no talent for concealment. His visits morning and evening were briefer, his tongue more benevolent.
“I know what you’re up to down there,” she said. “You needn’t think I don’t.”
He grinned sheepishly and wet his thumb. Her mouth worked silently at attempted speech for a moment. She speared a frying steak and flipped it over on its raw back, smiling vengefully in a mounting column of greasy blue vapor. He poked her clumsily with his stiff fingers; she shrieked a protest mixed of anger and amusement, and moved awkwardly out of his reach with bridling gait.
“Get away! I don’t want you round me! It’s too late for that.” She laughed with nagging mockery.
“Don’t you wish you could, though? I’ll vow!” she continued, kneading her lips for several seconds in an effort to speak. “I’d be ashamed. Every one’s laughing at you behind your back.”
“You lie! By God, you lie!” he thundered magnificently, touched. Hammer-hurling Thor.
But he tired very quickly of his new love. He was weary, and frightened by his depletion. For a time he gave the widow small sums of money, and forgot the rent. He transferred to her his storming abuse, muttered ominously to himself in long aisle-pacings at his shop, when he saw that he had lost the ancient freedom of his house and saddled himself with a tyrannous hag. One evening he returned insanely drunk, routed her out
