Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/85

Rh skunk in our precious little circle? Tell me, madam, are you a skunk?"

Her face was brick red; she was having difficulty with her breathing. The pale, white face of the little musician dazzled her in a most inexplicable way. Never before had she felt just like this.

"Am I a—what?" she gasped, her eyes popping.

"It is an animal that has an odour which—"

"Good God, you don't have to tell me what it is," she cried, but in suppressed tones. Her gaze swept the rear part of the shop. "It's a good thing for you, young fellow, that nobody heard you call me that name. Thank the good Lord, it isn't a busy day here. If anybody had heard you, I'd have you skinned alive."

"A profitless undertaking," he said, smiling without mirth, "but quite in your line, if reports are true. You are an expert at skinning people, alive or dead. But we are digressing. Are you going to turn against us?"

"I haven't said I was going to, have I?"

"Not in so many words."

"Well, then, what's all the fuss about? You come in here and shoot off your mouth as if— And say, who are you, anyhow? Tell me that! No, wait a minute. Don't tell me. I'll tell myself. When a man is kicked out of his own family because he'd sooner play a fiddle than carry a sword, I don't think he's got any right to come blatting to me about—"

"The cruelest monster the world has ever known, madam," he interrupted, stiffening, "fiddled while Rome was burning. Fiddlers are not always gentle. You may not have heard of one very small and unimportant incident in my own life. It was I who fiddled,—badly,