in, more aggressively than
before.

"Oh, if it were true!" thought Lily. "Oh, if it were true!"

She dared not believe it, it would have been too beautiful, beautiful
beyond dreams. And, with her nerves stretching to breaking-point:

"Prove it!" she said coldly, to Ave Maria.

"Yes, I have my proofs," replied Ave Maria, shaken with a furious cough.
"And I'll show them! Trampy belongs to me, not to you! He's in Paris, they
tell me.... And I mean to have him, do you hear? I've suffered enough and
to spare. I've done everything since he left me. Look here, at Caracas
people used to offer me twopence to let them black my eye, sometimes, when
my brother was locked up at the police-station. And there were the
one-horse circuses where we slept in a heap on the straw, in Chili or some
such country. And, sometimes, I lost my balance on the wire, because of my
cough. And my brother: you know him! And the cattle-men, when they're
drunk! One of them stabbed me here, with a knife, there, here, in the
breast; they had to cut it off--the breast--later, at Montevideo, because
of the gangrene. Yes, he stabbed me with a knife, because I wouldn't say,
'I love you,' to him! Fancy my saying, 'I love you,' to any one but
Trampy! Never! I would have let them jump on my chest with their hobnailed
boots first! And, now that Trampy's here, I want him! He belongs to me and
I mean to have him."

"Well, take him, if he belongs to you!" said Lily. "I don't care a hang
for your Trampy; I've turned him out long ago!"

"So ... it's true? If he's no longer with you, I can have him again. I
shall have him! I'll have my brother locked up, if necessary, to be free!
I have only to say a word, not because of the story of that nose which he
bit off at Rio: no, the other day, at Vaugirard, he used the knife. I'll
tell everything, to have my Trampy back."

And her rough voice became gentle now, in her Anglo-Italian jargon, with a
dash of Spanish in it; everything became clear, everything yielded before
the violence of that fierce love. Lily was astounded to hear it:

"That's what I call love!" she thought. "I had no idea, my! And all for
Trampy! It's worse than in the novels."

And she was touched, in spite of herself, and, when Ave Maria cried, "Oh,
how happy you must be, if he loves you!" Lily dared not protest that she
didn't care a hang for that soaker, for fear of hurting the poor martyr.
She replied, on the contrary, that Trampy was very nice, b