“Now shut yer gob, will ye,” interrupted Gypo excitedly. “It’s just like ye takin’ a man up wrong that way. Sure I didn’t mane anythin’ like that atall. Only ye just came in on me all of a sudden. What are ye havin’?” Katie looked at him in high dudgeon, still with her chin thrust out, her head turned sideways, her lips turned downwards and her hands on her hips. She murmured: “Double Gin,” without moving her eyes from Gypo’s face. Gypo arose and slouched up to the counter for the drink. Her eyes followed him shrewdly and she kept nodding her head slowly at his immense back. Her relationship with Gypo was of that irregular kind which is hard to describe by means of one word. She was undoubtedly not his wife and in the same manner she could not be called his mistress. But their relationship partook both of the nature of lawful marriage and of the concubinage that is sanctified by natural love. Katie loved Gypo because he was strong, big, silent, perhaps also because he was stupid and her ready slum “smartness” could always outwit his lumbering brain. Whenever Gypo had any money he spent it with her. Sometimes when he was without any money, she brought him home with her and provided him with his breakfast next morning. On the whole they were good friends. During the past six months after Gypo had been expelled from the Revolutionary Organization and left without friends or money or employment, Katie had stood between him and death from exposure or starvation. She loved him in her own amazing way. The last remains of her womanhood loved him as she might have loved a mate. But those shreds of love lived charily among the rank weeds of vice that flourished around them. It was only at times that they peeped out and covered the desert waste of her soul with the soft warmth and brilliance of their light. Each kindly act of pity for the lumbering giant was counteracted by a score of other acts that were vicious and cruel. While Gypo, with the nonchalance of the healthy strong man, took her for granted as if she were a natural contrivance of life, like fresh air or food. He would only notice her absence when she was needed. He brought the gin and handed it to her. She took it in silence. She sipped it slowly, holding it within an inch of her lips, staring at the ground as she drank, shivering now and again, as if the drink were ice cold. Gypo watched her suspiciously out of the corner of his eyes. “What brought ye around here anyway?” he said at last. He was extremely irritated that she should have come in on him, just at that moment, when he was trying to make a plan, when he had the money of his betrayal hot on his person, without being yet embalmed by a plausible excuse for its presence. He was irritated, but in a confused and ignorant way. He had not reasoned out a plausible excuse, even for his irritation. Katie held her empty glass upside down in her hand and looked at him, with her blue eyes almost shut.