“She couldn’t? What’d he done to her? Locked her up?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to,” he suggested.
“Huh.” And then: “She was an awful goof, then. Was he fool enough to believe she didn’t want to?”
“He didn’t take any chances. He had her locked up. In a book.”
“In a book?” she repeated. Then she comprehended. “Oh . . . . That’s what you’ve done, isn’t it? With that marble girl without any arms and legs you made? Hadn’t you rather have a live one? Say, you haven’t got any sweetheart or anything, have you?”
“No,” he answered. “How did you know?”
“You look so bad. Shabby. But that’s the reason: no woman is going to waste time on a man that’s satisfied with a piece of wood or something. You ought to get out of yourself. You'll either bust all of a sudden some day, or just dry up. . . . How old are you?”
“Thirty-six,” he told her. She said:
“Gabriel’s pants. Thirty-six years old, and living in a hole with a piece of rock, like a dog with a dry bone. Gabriel’s pants. Why don’t you get rid of it?” But he only stared down at her. “Give it to me, won’t you?”
“No.”
“I’ll buy it from you, then.”
“No.”
“Give you—” she looked at him with sober detachment. “Give you seventeen dollars for it. Cash.”
“No.”
She looked at him with a sort of patient exasperation. “Well, what are you going to do with it? Have you got any reason for keeping it? You didn’t steal it, did you? Don’t tell me you haven’t got any use for seventeen dollars, living like you do. I bet you haven’t got five dollars to your name, right now.
