After quiet had been restored, Philippina began to rage and rant: “Daniel’s a dunderhead. He could live like a Kaiser if he’d mix with the right people. I know a woman who is lousy with money, and she’s going to git a lot more; but Daniel, the poor bloke, ain’t got a ghost of an idea as to how to work people.” She laughed furiously; or, in order to ventilate her spiteful rage, she picked up some object and smashed it to pieces on the floor. Eleanore did not hear what she had said. Her hope was gone. Daniel had been out of work for three months: who could explain his strange inactivity? The rent would be due in a short while, and then what? One morning she went to Daniel’s room and said: “Daniel, we are out of money.” He was sitting at the table reading; he looked at her as if he had to think for a while who she was: “Just have patience,” he said, “you are not going to starve.” “I am doing all that I possibly can, Daniel,” continued Eleanore; “but tell me, please, how are you planning to keep the house going? I see no way out. Tell me, Daniel, tell me, please, what you are going to do.” “A musician must be poor, Eleanore,” replied Daniel, and looked at her with eyes that seemed to be frozen. “But he has got to live, I should think.” “You can’t live from husks alone, and I am not going to work my head off for husks.” “Daniel, oh Daniel, where is your mind? And where is your heart?” cried Eleanore in despair. “Where I should have been long ago,” he replied, without the shadow of a ray of hope. He got up, and turning his face away from Eleanore, said in a half-audible voice: “Let’s have no argument, no cogency, no urgency. Not now! Not now when I am creeping along on the earth with such light as is left me, trying to grope my way out of the hole. A man doesn’t give up the ghost so quickly as all that, Eleanore. The stomach is a very elastic piece of skin.” He went into the other room, sat down at the piano, and struck a slow-moving bass chord. Eleanore turned to the wall, and buried her feverish brow in her hands. VII It was not in Eleanore’s nature to submit to a misfortune without first having made every possible effort to evade it. She wrote for from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, with the result that she had finished all that was asked of her long before her time was really up. Then she looked around for a better paying position; it was in vain. Women had never been paid well, she had no recommendations, no personal connections, nothing on which she could depend or to which she might refer. Finally it occurred to her that she might make some money out of her flowers. She went to the florist at St. Lorenz Place, taking with her a garland of carnations and mignonettes she had made the day before. She told the florist she knew a great deal about flowers and had had considerable experience in handling them.