"or,
if you are not too cowardly, you may come with me to the Red Flag
Club."

"In God's name what do you mean----"

"Mean? I mean to take my pistol to the Red Flag Club and kill some
Bolsheviki. That is what I mean, my Angelo--my ruddy Eurasian pig!"

She slipped in the last hook, turned and enveloped him again with an
insolent, slanting glance: "_Allons!_ Do you come to the Red Flag?"

"Marya----"

"Yes or no! _Allez!_"

"My God, are--are you then demented?" he faltered.

"My God, I'm not," she mimicked him, "but I can't answer for what I
might do to you if you hang around this apartment any longer."

She came slowly toward him, her hands bracketed on her hips, her
strange eyes narrowing.

"Listen to me," she said. "I have loved many times. But never _you_!
One doesn't love your kind. One experiments, possibly, if idle.

"A man died to-day whom I loved; but was too stupid to love enough.
Perhaps he knows now how stupid I am.... Unless they blew his soul to
pieces, also. _Allez!_ Good-night. I tell you I have business to
attend to, and you stand there rolling your woman's eyes at me!----"

"Damn you!" he said between his teeth. "What is the matter with
you----"

He had caught her arm; she wrenched it free, tearing the sleeve to her
naked shoulder.

Then she went to her desk and took a pistol from an upper drawer.

"If you don't go," she said, "I shall have to shoot you and leave you
here kicking on the carpet."

"In God's name, Marya!" he cried hoarsely, "who is it you shall kill
at the hall?"

"I shall kill Sondheim and Bromberg and Kastner, I hope. What of it?"

"But--if I go to-night--the others will say _I_ did it! I can't run
away if you do such thing! I can not go into Mexico but they shall
arrest me before I am at the border----"

"Eurasian pig, I shall admit the killing!" she said with a green gleam
in her eyes that perhaps was laughter.

"Yes, my Marya," he explained in agony, the sweat pouring from his
temples, "but if they think me your accomplice they shall arrest me.
Me--I can not wait--I shall be ruined if I am arrest! You do not
comprehend. I have not said it to you how it is that I am compel to
travel with some money which--which is not--my own."

Marya looked at him for a long while. Suddenly she flung the pistol
into a corner, threw back her head while peal on peal of laughter rang
out in the room.

"A thief," she said, fairly holding her slender sides between gemmed
fing