"And it wasn’t?" she asked, in surprise. "Then it was serious opera instead of comic. They call serious opera grand, I believe. And is that the reason they call larceny grand—because it is serious?"
For a time he sat in a deep study of her. How different from the nervous and impressionable weakling who had just left the room; and in looking at her he felt that his eyes refused to glitter with a snake-like charm; they were dull and flat, and he drew his hand across them. "Do you know that I like you?" he said.
"Then I do not bring up an unpleasant recollection."
"No, a beautiful vision." And now he had more confidence in his eyes, for he got up and moved toward her. She slipped off the stool and stood looking at him.
"Won’t you play something for me?" he asked.
"I don’t want to play. I don’t feel like it."
"My hands aren’t asleep." She moved off from him.
She looked him in the eye. "My grandmother killed a panther," she said.
He drew his hand across his eyes; he recalled what Bodney had said—about her getting through with him. In the dictionary of slang there is a word to fit him: the resources of his "gall" were boundless. "Why don’t you like me?" he asked. "Am I ugly in your sight? Do I look like a villain?"
"If you looked more like a villain you’d be less dangerous."
"That’s cruel. We may not see each other again. Won’t you shake hands with me?"
"What is the use of shaking hands with a stranger we are never to see again," she said.
"But if we shake hands," he persisted, "we may not be strangers."
William strolled through the room, halting just long enough to assure them that he was not trying to break into the plot. "He’s a queer duck," said Goyle.
"I wish there were more of his feather," she replied. "He can pass through without stopping."
"And so could I but for you," he rejoined.
She snapped her eyes at him. "What nerve tonic do you take?"
"Nature’s. She gives me a tonic whenever I look at you."
She laughed at this, and she said: "I am woman enough to like that sort of talk, but I don’t like you."
"You like my talk, but don’t like me. Why this discrepancy? Why don’t you like me?"
"Oh, I don’t know. You give me the creeps."
"Oh, the creeps would make anybody frank."
Bodney appeared at the door and cleared his throat to attract attention, and he was bold enough to ask her if she had got through with him. "Long ago," she answered. "And now you may have him."