“No, it is part of yours,” I said coldly to her, and it amused me to see her recoil and her face turn crimson with anger at this audacious and discourteous retort.

“How dare you!” she drew herself up to her full height, her eyes flashing daggers of enmity at me.

“It appears, Marion, that a man must dare a great deal to overcome your intolerably detestable nature. Even if I had been furnished no details whatsoever, I should be able to conclude for my own analysis of your personality exactly why your husband found it necessary to leave your bed and board,” I said with a casual shrug.

She uttered a little cry and then, taking a step forward, slapped me across the cheek. It was a smart, stinging blow, and my eyes widened with delighted surprise. Now she had really added to her account; in fact, she would need an extra page just for that one mark of disfavor in our little ledger. It was already looming into quite a debt.

“Good!” I said, “because now we can be on equal terms. You have insulted me, you have deprecated and disparaged my character without reason or cause, and now you strike me simply because I am candid enough to tell you that it is unfair of you to use your sex as an immunity. If you were a man, Marion, and had dared titter a third of these irritating syllables you have already uttered in my presence, to say nothing of this last courtesy of yours, you would already have merited a sound thrashing with my fists, if not at worst a challenge to a duel. But since you are a woman, and I do not believe and never have believed that a member of the supposedly tender sex should go unrebuked and unscathed for taking unfair advantage of the differences between the sexes; you shall have to be punished in a different way. And I think we shall begin this way.”

Saying this, I pushed her into the famous armchair which I have already described, and bent down to touch the mechanism which at once folded its arms around her and clutched her to it as if, inanimate object though it was, it already shared my growing desire for her tasty charms!