Mendel took out his sketch-book and drew a rough portrait of Oliver in a gown tight-fitting above the waist and full in the skirt.
"I should look a guy in that," she said. "It's nothing like the fashion."
"You've done with fashion," said Logan. "You've done with the world of shops and snobs and bored, idiotic women. You're above all that now. In the first place there won't be any money for fashion, and in the second place there's no room in our kind of life for rubbish. You're a free woman now, and don't you forget it, or I'll knock your head off."
"But it's a horrible, ugly dress," said Oliver, almost in tears.
"It's what you're going to wear. I'll buy the stuff to-morrow and make it myself. What colour would you like?"
"You know I can't. I've said good-bye to all the girls."
"For God's sake don't quarrel," said Mendel. "One would think you had been married for ten years. Let her wear what she likes until she wants some new clothes."
"Highty Tighty! Little boy!" sang Oliver. "You talk as though I were a little girl."
"You behave like one," snapped Mendel, and her face was overcast with a cloud of malignant sulkiness.
They went on to a music-hall, where Logan and she sat with their arms locked and their shoulders pressed together, whispering and babbling to each other.
Mendel sat bolt upright with his arms folded, staring at the stage but seeing nothing, so lost was he in the contemplation of the strange turn of affairs by which the adventure which had promised to lead him straight to art had deposited him in a muddy little pool of life. He would not submit to it. He would not surrender Logan and all the hopes he had aroused. Prepared as he had been to follow Logan through fire, he would not shrink when the way led through the morass. Friendship was to him no fair-weather luxury, and nothing but falsehood or faithlessness in his friend could make him relinquish it.
He told himself that Logan would soon tire of it, that Oliver would go the way of her kind. She was, after all, better than Hetty Finch, since she had a capacity for childish enjoyment.
She revelled in the sentimental ditties and the suggestive humours of the comedians, pressed closer and closer to Logan, and grew elated and strangely exalted as the evening wore on. And as they left the music-hall she gripped Mendel's arm and brought her face close to his and whispered:--