“You don’t have to work so hard if you don’t want to,” he suggested, his words becoming bolder not so much in the actual phrases he used as in their increased suggestiveness. “I have no objection to coloured girls—in fact, I really prefer them—”
“That’s really very nice of you—very generous indeed,” Mimi observed, her amusement now rapidly conquering her apprehension.
“Oh, no, not at all—not at all!” he protested, thinking her serious. “Even when I lived in the South I had none of the usual prejudice.”
“How very remarkable!” cooed Mimi. Her voice had in it the velvety smoothness of swan’s-down.
To himself he thought, this is easier than I expected, as he advanced possessively towards her.
“How soon am I going to see you?” he queried softly.
“Don’t be silly!” Mimi calmly advised him. “In the first place you are fat. In the second, you are old and bald. In the third, you are white. Fourth, you are vain and stupid and ignorant and repulsive. Don’t think I’m falling back on the sentimental melodramatics of the ‘poor working girl.’ I’m not—I let you run along just to set the stage for telling you my opinion of you.”
Her voice was as dispassionate as that of a schoolgirl monotonously listing the products from Brazil. There were no heroics, no tears, but only a relentless cataloguing of the physical and mental defects of the would-be Casanova. He gasped.