There was a painful silence. Each person in the room felt sure that a catastrophe was imminent. The fact that the room, a few minutes before, had been full of the sound of libidinous revelry made the silence all the more terrible. Everybody watched Gypo. His huge body, monstrous with strange movement, stood under the glare of the lamp that hung from the ceiling. His face, staring steadily at the woman, changed again and again, in response to the dark and mysterious suggestions that chased one another through his mind. At one moment his chest would heave and his limbs would stiffen. Then his breath would come out with a snap. His jaws would set. His eyes would expand. A movement would begin in his throat. Then a sound like a curtailed snort would come from his nostrils. At last, after waiting for twenty seconds, the spectators were startled by the unexpected outcome of these movements. Gypo broke into a roar of laughter. He raised his head and laughed at the ceiling. Everybody gaped at him in fright. All gaped at him, terrified, except the woman. As if in response to his laughter, laughter broke from her lips too, but it was the shrill, thin laughter of hysteria, that made her eyes glitter coldly. Breaking off in the middle of his laugh, Gypo strode over to Aunt Betty. He took her by the arm, pointed his finger at the woman in the fur coat and whispered hoarsely: “I want her. Get me a room. I want to take her upstairs. Ye can have whatever money ye ask.” “Never,” shrieked the woman in the fur coat. She put her hands to her face. Then she took a tiny step forward with her right foot and stood leaning on the foot, trembling as if she had planted it on ice. “None of this nonsense, Phyllis,” said Aunt Betty, coming forward to the centre of the room. She faced the fur-coated woman with her arms akimbo and her jaws squared. “I’m fed up with your swagger. You’re no better than yer board and lodging, an’ as long as I keep you, you’re no better than any other woman that takes bite and sup in my house. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. One man is as good as another. You’re going with him.” “That’s true, Aunt Betty,” cried several women, looking with hatred at the fur-coated woman. “Rabble,” shrieked the fur-coated woman, stamping her feet and shaking her fists all round her at the women. “What filthy souls you have to be reduced to this level. I’m not a prostitute like you and that’s why you hate me. You hate me because I’m an educated woman and——” “It’s nothin’ o’ the kind,” cried a big, large-boned, red-faced, strong, handsome woman, called Connemara Maggie. “We hate ye because yer a stuck-up, ignorant thing, that thinks she’s better than what God turned her into; an’ God forgive me for sayin’ so——” “More power to ye, Maggie,” interrupted several, “tell her yer mind.” “I don’t mind what you say, Connemara Maggie,” gasped the fur-coated one. “You’re not the worst of them and——”