"You can't do that; you know you can't. You know how things are without my tellin' you. What makes you so stubborn all of a sudden?" "I don' lika dees Meesta Wesley Dyker." "That's no reason why you should double-cross me." "'E's too mucha de fina gentleman." "I don't care what he is; you ought to know what I am. Do you want to tear up your own meal-ticket and throw down your easy money?" "Easy mon'? You maka de joke!" The woman's voice noticeably changed. "Do you mean you want some more coin?" she asked. The Italian did not answer. "Because I won't give it to you," Rose continued, anger darting into her still cautiously lowered voice. "I know what you're doing with it. I know you had a girl from a department store out at shows twice last week, an' the second time she had a new dress on." Somewhere in the front of the house a door closed heavily. "'E's comin'," the Italian coolly commented. "Do you wanta that I go along in with you?" As quickly as it had entered, all the anger fled from Rose's voice, and Violet, accustomed to it in command or at satisfied ease, was amazed now to hear it swaying between terror and genuine affection. "I didn't mean it!" Rose pleaded. "I didn't believe it when I heard it an' I don't believe it now, I know how much it costs a fellow to live. Here's another ten-spot. I--I--you know how I hate Dyker, and Angel, you know that I love you!" The listener heard Angelelli rise and heard even his voice soften, though probably less with affection than with gratification. "Now you talka lika de person witha gooda sense," he said. "Don' you listen to de beega lie no more. I lika you--nobody but only you. You are de gooda girl." There was a whispered word more, and then the kitchen door was softly shut and Violet heard Rose, going into the next room, welcome that Wesley Dyker who, Violet had, to Celeste, so favorably compared with Angel. The woman on the stairs hesitated. She wanted to pursue her eavesdropping, and she knew that she could regain her room, should the doorbell ring, before she was likely to be missed; but she was afraid that, in the maid's absence, Rose might return to the kitchen for a bottle of wine and discover her. Accordingly she waited the few minutes that were required for the first of such errands, and, those over, crept forward to the lighted keyhole, ready to retreat at the first intimation of danger. She gave her eye precedence over her ear, and, as it chanced that Dyker was sitting directly in the limited shaft of her vision, she was enabled to get what was her first careful view of him.