The voice of Mrs. Elbridge was heard, calling Florence, who answered that she was coming, but she halted long enough to say to Agnes, mischievously, that she might learn to love him if she loved to hate him. Both love and hate were kindred passions, with but a thin partition between them. As she was going out, Agnes shouted after her that, if she ever loved him she would hate herself, and then, just as Goyle and Bodney entered the room, she added: "We tar and feather such fellows in Quincy." "You do what in Quincy?" Bodney asked. And Agnes, without looking round, repeated: "Tar and feather such fellows." Goyle knew that she meant him, but instead of kindling resentment, her words aroused in him an additional interest in her. He looked at her as in the rhythmic sway of her graceful form, the nodding of her shapely head, she kept time with a tune, half remembered, half improvised; and, turning to Bodney, he asked in tones too low for the girl to hear: "Has she got any money?" "I think she has." "Leave me alone with her." "Do you want to snatch her purse?" "Do you suppose I want a hair pin, a pearl button, a scrap of verse, and a three-cornered piece of silk that no man can match? I mean, has she got any money in her own name?" "I haven’t asked her, but I think she has." "Then leave me alone with her." Bodney stood looking at him. There was a continuous fascination in the fellow’s affrontery. "All right," he said, but quickly added: "We’ve got to go down town, you know. I’ll step into the office and wait till she gets through with you. You may hypnotize me, but—" Goyle cut him off with a gesture. "Nonsense! When she gets through with me! Cool, coming from a man whose honor I have saved at the risk of my own. But no cooler than the bullet you threatened me with." "I wish I had given it to you," said Bodney. "Do you? It’s not too late, if you are bent on murder. But that’s all right," he broke off, with a wave of the hand. "Leave me alone with her." Bodney went out and Goyle sat down on a sofa, gazed at the girl, cleared his throat, coughed; but she did not look round. "What are you playing? May I ask?" "You have asked," she replied, without looking round. "But you haven’t told me." She left off playing, and slowly turned on the stool to face him. "A tune they played in Quincy one night, when they tarred and feathered a man," she said. And then, with a smile of sweet innocence, she added: "You were never in Quincy, were you?" "Well, I was never tarred and feathered there." "Possibly an acknowledgment that you were never in the town. Oh, somebody told me that you were once connected with opera." "Then somebody flattered me. I couldn’t sing in a chorus of scissors grinders." "A sort of Chinese opera, I inferred," she said. "Well, that’s about the only sort I could sing in. Chinese opera, eh?" "Yes, that’s what I inferred. It was something about Sing-Sing. Isn’t that Chinese?"