In the gloom she could see that he threw a suspicious glance at her for the endearing epithet, but he put away the knife. "What do you want to say?" he growled. "Only this." She brought her arm swiftly round and emptied the water-bottle over him. "Though I ought to smash it on your greasy head. I read in a book once that the Jews were a subject race. You'd better light the gas." He spluttered that he was all wet, and she turned away from him, horribly scared that in a moment his fingers would be tightening round her neck; but he had taken off his coat and was shaking it. Sylvia poked the fire and sat down again in the arm-chair. "Listen," she began. He came across the room in his shirt-sleeves, his tie hanging in a cascade of amber silk over his waistcoat. "No, don't pull down the blinds," she added. "I want to be quite sure you really have cooled down and aren't going to play with that knife again. Listen. It's no good your trying to make love to me. I don't want to be made love to by anybody, least of all by you." Danny looked more cheerful when she assured him of her indifference to other men. "It's no use your killing me, because you'll only be hanged. It's no use your stabbing me, because you'll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn't. I'm more afraid of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I'm going to leave this house. The weather's getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny." They went to the Middlesex music-hall that evening, and Danny did not suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to introduce him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o'clock, and Danny on some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia's glances directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr. Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished if they had bitten him. "You're a Miss Smartie, aren't you?" said Jay Cohen.