And, as he remained standing, she took a little electric button attached to a coil that was on the couch, and pressed it. In the hall outside a buzz was heard, and then the soft, sliding step of Kiki. "Tea?" she said, turning to him with an amused look, the little button pressed against her thin, sharp row of teeth, that were clear and tiny as a child’s. "No, of course not," he said furiously. "No tea, Kiki," she said, in that same round, musical tone from which she seldom varied. She held the button in her long fingers, caressing her cheek with it, and, looking at him with half-closed eyes, repeated: "Sit down." Though the forward movement of Slade had been unconscious and quite devoid of any personal object, he was angrily aware that she had availed herself of his action to introduce a tantalizing defiance which awakened all the savage in him, as he realized the helplessness of his crude strength before the raillery that shone from her eyes. He drew his chair closer to her, sat down on its edge, one knee forward, his chin in his hand half concealing his face, looking at her with the shrewd cruelty of a prosecuting attorney. "What’s your game?" he said. "The game itself," she answered, with a little animation in her eyes and a scarcely perceptible, gradual turning of her whole body toward him. "What’s your game?" he repeated. She looked at him a moment as she might have looked at a child, and then, imitating the gesture with which he had sunk his chin in his palm, said: "What a convenient formula! And is that the way you always begin?" "Perhaps." "Do you know," she continued, "it is extraordinary how simple you big men—you trust kings—are. You have the vision of an eagle on one side, and the groping glance of a baby when you deal with us. Sometimes I think that it’s all instinct, that all you understand is to throw down what resists you—that you haven’t great minds at all, and that that is all that interests you in business and in us. That is why a big man will always end up by meeting some little woman who will lead him around by the nose. Any little fool of a woman who knows enough never to cease resisting you can do it." "Do you like me?" he said brutally. "Yes." "Much?" "Quite a good deal." "Are you planning to marry me?" She smiled her languid, amused smile without shifting her glance from his. "Why don’t you come to the point?" she said. "What do you mean?" "I don’t have to ask your game; I know it." "What do you know?" "Shall I tell you why you came here at a moment when you are at bay, attacked everywhere?" "Why?" "To find out what I know about Majendie." "Do you know anything?" "He is coming here tonight," she said.