She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His
greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire.
"You have a tongue like none I ever heard," he said impulsively. "You've
got a mind that thinks, you've got dash and can take risks. You took
risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that
I'd met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You
choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next
day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got
nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I've had a little too much
liquor. I felt it more because you're the only kind of woman that could
ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging and
set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It's not
hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every man has
his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing is to find
out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can't buy everyone in the
same way, even if you use a different price. You've got to find out how
they want the price--whether it's to be handed over the counter, so to
speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a pocket, or dropped
in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny make-believe that fools
nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in everyone everywhere.
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