She was reclining, rather than seated, on the sofa, with small and large cushions, which allowed her to change the frame of which she was the picture. She was smoking a cigarette, and had a French novel on her knee that could not have interested her very much, for at that moment she yawned. The yawn was cut short, or rather interrupted, by the sudden opening of the sitting-room door; no one ever entered the room in that way but him. This time it was more like him than usual: always a husband, now an angry one. He entered with his hat on his head, his stick in his hand, as if he were just going out or had just come in. The latter was the case. On returning from his walk a large envelope had been put into his hand in the anteroom. It contained a dressmaker’s bill, the third or fourth he had received in a few months. The total was very high, higher than usual, and he came into the room with the bill in his hand to make a scene. “Come, now, come, now, my lady, when shall we finish with these accounts?” She made no answer, but continued to smoke, only growing a little red in the face. “It seems that my lady believes herself to be a millionaire; this is the third bill that I have had to pay in little more than four months. But what game are we playing, my lady?” And _my lady_, throwing the end of her cigarette on a Japanese tray, stretched out her voluptuous limbs, and showed, as if by chance, a fairy-like foot and a leg for a sculptor. More than once already had the disclosure of such a picture, sacred to love, warded off a heavy storm. Now, however, neither foot nor leg could disarm her husband, who had thrown his stick on a chair, but kept on his hat, to increase the violence of his words and to give authority to his threats. In the meantime he rumpled and then folded the innocent paper with alternate convulsive movements. “I shall not pay this bill; you must pay it yourself. You have jewels (given by me, of course); put them in pawn. You will then learn not to play the princess with other people’s money.” The little foot and leg retired under the dress, ashamed of their defeat, and at last the lady opened her mouth too: “I think you can hardly expect me to cut a sorry figure in society.” “But what society? Society of Egypt! Many ladies who are more truly ladies than you don’t spend half what you do. I have inquired and know very well.” “Yes, your Fifi told you, your Fifi, for whom you pay much larger bills than you do for your wife.” Never had his wife uttered the name of the stage dancer until that moment, and he had believed her to be quite ignorant of his amours. He reddened up to his hair, frowned, and shook himself as if he had been stung by a viper, and the conversation became embittered even to brutality. “Ah! jealous, and impertinent too! It seems to me that when one has not brought a halfpenny of dowry there ought to be a little more modesty and economy.”