“Well, Ryzors,” she said at last (and her accent jarred him horribly), “this is very strynge behyviour.”

“Which?”

“Which?  Do you know you haven’t been near me for two months?”

He laughed uneasily.  “I couldn’t be near you when I was away.”

“Never said you could.  But what did you go away for?”

“Business.”

“Too busy to write, I suppose?”

“Much too busy.”

She rose, and with one hand on his shoulder steered him into the front room.

“Sit down,” she said.  “And don’t look so sulky.  I want to talk to you sensibly.”

He sat down where he had sat that night two months ago, on the Polar bear skin.  She sat down too, with a sweeping side-long movement of her hips that drew her thin skirts close about her.  She contemplated the effect a little dubiously, then with shy nervous fingers loosened and shook out the folds.  He leaned back, withdrawn as far as possible into the corner of the divan.  The associations of the place were unspeakably loathsome to him.

“Look here, dear”—­(In Poppy’s world the term of endearment went for nothing; it was simply the stamp upon the current coin of comradeship.  If only that had been the beginning and the end between them!)

“I haven’t a minute—­but, I’m going to ask you something” (though Poppy hadn’t a minute she was applying herself very leisurely to the making of cigarettes).  “Don’t go and get huffy at what I’m going to say.  Do you happen to owe Dicky anything?”

“Why?”

“Tell you why afterwards. Do you owe him anything?”

“Oh, well—­a certain amount—­Why?”

“Why?  Because I think he owes you something.  And that’s a grudge.  It isn’t my business, but if I were you, Rickets, I’d pay him orf and have done with him.”

“Oh, that’s all right.  I’m safe enough.”

“You?  It’s just you who isn’t.  Dicky’s not a bad sort, in his way.  All the same, he’d sell you up as soon as look at you.  Unless—­” (for a moment her bright eyes clouded, charged with the melancholy meanings of the world) “Unless you happened to be an orf’ly pretty woman.”  She laid her right leg across her left knee and struck a vesta on the heel of her shoe.

“Then, of course, he’d sooner look at me.”

Poppy puffed at her cigarette and threw the vesta into the grate with a dexterous jerk of her white forearm.  “Look at you first.  Sell you up—­after.”  Then Poppy burst into song—­

    “Oh, he is such a nice little boy,
    When there’s nothing you do to annoy;
        But he’s apt to stand aloof
        If you arsk him for the oof,
      And it’s then that he looks coy. 
        Oh, he’ll show the cloven hoof,
        If you put him to the proof. 
    When you want him to hand you the boodle
    He’s not such a nice little boy.

“Yes, dickee, I see you!”