"For Heaven's sake, Will, have a little patience!" she said. "If you like your man so well, you had better live at home, but don't come around here with a grouch and bulldoze everybody----" "Don't think for a moment that there's much to come around here for. Annie, this room's stuffy." "Yassuh." "Draw those _portieres_. Let those curtains up. Let's have a little light. Take away those clothes and hide them. Don't you know that a man doesn't want to see the next morning anything to remind him of the night before? Make the place look a little respectable." Annie stood in considerable awe of Brockton. In fact, she was afraid of him, so she did not stand on the order of going. She scurried around, and after picking up the coat and vest, opera cloak and other things, threw them over her arm without any idea of order. "Be careful!" angrily shouted the irate broker, who was watching her. "You're not taking the wash off the line." "Yassuh!" The negress literally flew out of the room. Laura put down her newspaper. "I must say you're rather amiable this morning," she said pointedly. Brockton turned his head away. "I feel like h--ll," he growled. "Market unsatisfactory?" she inquired. "No, head too big." Lighting a cigar, he took a puff and then made a wry face. Putting the offending weed into the empty cup, he said, with another grimace: "Tastes like punk." "You drank a lot," she said unconcernedly. He nodded. "Yes--we'll have to cut out these parties. I can't do those things any more. I'm not as young as I was, and in the morning it makes me sick." Looking up at her, he added. "How do you feel?" She rose from the breakfast table and sat down at a small _escritoire_. "A little tired, that's all," she said languidly. "You didn't touch anything, did you?" "No." "That's right--you've been taking too much lately. It was a great old party, though, wasn't it?" Laura yawned and gazed listlessly out of the window. "Do you think so?" Not noticing her expression of wearied disgust, he went on: "Yes, for that sort of a blow-out. Not too rough, but just a little easy. I like them at night, but I hate them in the morning. Were you bored?" Picking up his newspaper, he started to glance over it carelessly. Still staring idly into the street, she answered laconically: "I'm always bored by such things as that." "You don't have to go." "You asked me." "Still, you could say no." Rising, she stooped and picked up a newspaper which had fallen on the floor. Placing it on the breakfast table, she returned to her seat at the desk. "But you asked me," she insisted. "What did you go for if you didn't want to?" "_You_ wanted me to." "I don't quite get you," he said impatiently. "Well, it's just this, Will--you have all my time when I'm not in the theatre, and you can do with it just what you please. You pay for it. I'm working for you."