She turned to stare at me and I went on, still speaking rapidly, with a kind of hurried nervous stuttering manner brought on by the liquor and a fear that if I stopped speaking I should not be able to start again. “I refer to the bed,” I said, going up close to her and pointing at it. “You see, don’t you, that the sheets you are putting on the bed are soiled?” I pounded on my own chest, much in the manner of the primitive hero in Mr. Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Hairy Ape”; and no doubt had I at that time seen the play I might at that moment have begun saying in hoarse, throaty tones: “I belong. I belong.” I did not say anything of the sort because I am not primitive and had not then seen the play, nor did I whine or complain because of the soiled sheets on the bed. I talked, I am afraid, rather like a Napoleon or a Tamerlane to poor Nora who was already appalled by my sudden descent upon her. Pounding on my chest and descending upon her I made a speech something in the following manner: “My dear Nora, you are a woman and no doubt a virgin, but you may not always be one. Have hopes. Some day a man will come along who will admire your person and will ask your hand in marriage.” I looked at her somewhat critically. “You will not refuse him,” I declared, with the air of a soothsayer delivering himself of a prophecy. “You will accept the marriage state, Nora, partly because you are bored, partly because you will look upon the opportunity as a means of escape from your present way of life, and partly because you will find within yourself an instinct telling you that any kind of marriage will bring you something you want.” “But we will not discuss you. We will discuss myself,” I declared. I continued pounding myself on the chest and so great was my momentary enthusiasm that later my breast was somewhat sore. “Nora, woman,” I said, “look at me! You cannot see my body and I dare say if I did not have on these soiled clothes your maidenly modesty would compel you to run out of this room. But do not run. I do not intend to take off my clothes.” “Very well, we will not speak any more of my body,” I said in a loud voice, wishing to reassure her since I could see she was becoming a little alarmed. No doubt she thought me insane. She had grown slightly pale and had stepped away from me so that her back was against the wall and the soiled water lilies were just above her head. “I am not speaking of my own body in relation to your body, do not get that entirely feminine notion into your head,” I explained. “I am speaking of my body in relation to yonder soiled sheets.”