He says yes, he will, but he doesn't mean it. He waits until he
can catch me with my guard down. Then he seizes a comb, and using
the edge of his left hand as a bevel and operating his right with
a sort of free-arm Spencerian movement, he roaches my hair up in a
scallop effect on either side, and upon reaching the crest he
fights with it and wrestles with it until he makes it stand erect
in a feather-edged design. I can tell by his expression that he
is pleased with this arrangement. He loves to send his victims
forth into the world tufted like the fretful cockatoo. He likes
to see surging waves of hair dash high on a stern and rockbound
head. His sense of the artistic demands such a result.

What cares he how I feel about it so long as the higher cravings
of his own nature are satisfied? But I resent it--I resent it
bitterly. I object to having my head look like a real-estate
development with an opening for a new street going up each side
and an ornamental design in fancy landscape gardening across the
top. If I permit this I won't be able to keep on saying that I
was twenty-seven on my last birthday, with some hope of getting
away with it. So I insist that he put my front hair right back
where he found it. He does so, under protest and begrudgingly,
it is true, but he does it. And then, watching his opportunity,
he runs in on me and overpowers me and roaches it up some more.

If I weaken and submit he is happy as the day is long. If he
gets it roached up on both sides that will make me look like a
horizontal-bar performer, which is his idea of manly beauty. Or
if he gets it roached up on one side only there is still some
consolation in it for him I'm liable to be mistaken anywhere for
a trained-animal performer. But once in a very great while he