THE STEADFAST HEART
a-goin’ to keep it.” A savage smile distorted his face. “This here’s travelin’ expenses. It’s goin’ to take me to see that king I was alludin’ to.”
“How much?” repeated Mrs. Burke insistently.
“I’ve jest counted up to forty-six dollars, and I hain’t finished yit…. Hain’t seen so much for quite a spell. Don’t you wisht you had it?” He held the money tantalizingly toward his wife, but when she snatched at it, he struck her wrist violently aside. “G’wan back and eat opium,” he growled dangerously.
“You stole it,” she squawked. “You stole it.”
Opium now owned full possession of the woman. A spurious flush made her cheeks more unseemly than before and there was a false sprightliness about her, an ephemeral, unnatural vigor which was somehow horrible to see. Her appearance was impious…. She moved closer to her husband.
Titus was weary of his fun. His lips twisted into lines of cruelty and he struck his wife so that she fell sprawling to the floor, where she lay and screamed, uttering shriek after shriek.
“Be still, you hell-cat,” Titus muttered. For a moment he stood over her menacingly, then he stepped across her body to the door where he paused. “Don't go follerin’ me,” he said to An-
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