Catching at the professional figure his manner had conjured up, he ran his further remarks into that mould. The presence of his watch in his hand had brought some image of the family physician or gouty attorney. It all centred round the watch, and her interest in the time of day. “I have found that this was only another fraud on my too credulous sensibility.” He smiled with professional courtesy. “At sight of you, my mood evaporated. But what I want to talk about is what is left. It would be well to bring our accounts up to date. I’m afraid the reckoning is enormously against me. You have been a criminally indulgent partner⸺” He had now got the image down to the more precise form of two partners, perhaps comfortable wine merchants, going through their books. “My dear boy, I know that. You needn’t trouble to go any further. But why are you going into these calculations, and sums of profit and loss?” “Because my sentimental finances, if I may use that term, are in a bad state.” “Then they only match your worldly ones.” “In my worldly ones I have no partner,” he reminded her. She cast her eyes about in swoops, full of self-possessed wildness. “I exonerate you, Sorbet,” she said, “you needn’t go into details. What is _yours_ and what is _mine_. My God! What does it matter? Not much!” “I know you to be generous⸺” “Leave that then! Leave these calculations! All that means so _little_ to me! I feel at the end of my strength—_au bout de force_!” She always heaved this out with much energy. “If you’ve made up your mind to go—do so, Sorbet. I release you! You owe me nothing. It was all my fault. But spare me a reckoning. I can’t stand any more⸺” “No, I insist on being responsible. We can’t leave things upside down—our books in an endless muddle, our desks open, and just walk away for ever—and perhaps set up shop somewhere else?” “I do not feel in any mood to ‘set up shop somewhere else,’ I can assure you!” The unbusinesslike element in the situation she had allowed to develop for obvious reasons. She now resisted his dishonest attempt to set this right, and benefit first, as he had done, by disorder, and lastly by order. “We can’t, in any case, improve matters by talking. I—I, you needn’t fear for me, Sorbet. I can look after myself, only don’t let us wrangle,” with appealing gesture and saintlily smiling face, “let us part friends. Let us be worthy of each other.” Bertha always opposed to Tarr’s images her Teutonic lyricism, usually repeating the same phrases several times. This was degenerating into their routine of wrangle. Always confronted by this imperturbable, deaf and blind “generosity,” the day would end in the usual senseless “draw.” His words still remained unsaid.