"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Course there's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. I wouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I even know where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, Miss Harperly's." "You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God! Marcia! That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately she could manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! She must keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black. "Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab." "How do you know it's--up?" "Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural to put it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate." "So--you _have_--been watching." "Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got to town--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's a mighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl brings your--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a family of Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon." "O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rolling suddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake! Please!" He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheek and its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid's dress. "By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream if you handle it right, honey." "My way is the right way for me." "But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on the job. Promote it!" "Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of your mother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of your wildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you in South America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way you squandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. The alfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't get your hands on my affairs. My way suits me!" The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in the circular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the door and the hairy voice that came through. "All out!" "Yes," she said, without knowing it. "You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman like you, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something with a fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regard for the girl. Black-face!" "What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kept her like a lily!"