James looked at him, and did not understand.
"I got it straight, I did!" he said.
Lippy didn't want to look at it.
"I don't want it, there!" burst out James (he could not for his life have told you why), and Lippy, leaning over familiarly but insolently, told him (in Polish English) that if he tried to sell it he would not long be a free man. James thought this treason, and in his heart he was determined on revenge. What had he done to Lippy to receive such a threat? The whole air about these men as they met, and as this lump of cloth lay between them, was unreal and fantastic. Each felt it, each in his utterly different mind. For such things, if you will excuse me, happen to the poor also, as we all know they do to the rich, whether through drink or what-not I can't tell, whether for drink or what-not it is for them to determine. There was fate, and there was compulsion, and there was the profound ill-ease of the soul hovering over that dirty counter in the slums as they hover over the tables of politicians when similar bargains are toward in a larger world. James tied his bundle up again and went out without a word.
