They had been married nearly a month. He knew that she was poor. Why
hadn't he said something or, better still, DONE something? Doubtless
he had simply forgotten. But since he had forgotten for a month, might
he not continue to forget? True, he had himself been poor at one time
in his life, very poor, and that for a long time. But it had been so
many years ago that he had probably lost all sense of the meaning of
poverty. She frowned at this evidence of his lack of the finer
sensibilities--by no means the first time that lack had been
disagreeably thrust upon her. Soon she would be without money--and she
must have money--not much, as all the serious expenses were looked
after by the general, but still a little money. How could she get it?
How could she remind him of his neglect without seeming to be
indelicate? It was a difficult problem. She worked at it more and
more continuously, and irritably, and nervously, as the days went by
and her fifty-two francs dwindled to five.
She lay awake, planning long and elaborate conversations that would
imperceptibly lead him up to where he must see what she needed without
seeing that he had been led. She carried out these ingenious
conversations. She led him along, he docilely and unsuspectingly
following. She brought him up to where it seemed to her impossible for
any human being endowed with the ordinary faculties to fail to see what
was so plainly in view. All in vain. General William Siddall gazed
placidly--and saw nothing.
Several days of these failures, and with her funds reduced to a
fifty-centime piece and a two-sous copper she made a frontal attack.
When they went forth for the day's shopping she left her gold bag
behind. After an hour or so she said:
"I've got to go to the Galleries Lafayette for some little things. I
shan't ask you to sacrifice yourself. I know you hate those stuffy,
smelly big shops."
"Very well," said he. "I'll use the time in a call on my bankers."
As they were about to separate, she taking the motor and he walking,
she made a face of charming dismay and said: "How provoking! I've
left my bag at the hotel."
Instead of the expected prompt offer of money he said, "It'll only take
you a minute or so to drive there."
"But it's out of the way," she replied. "I'll need only a hundred
francs or so."
Said he: "I've an account at the Bon Marche. Go there and have the
things charged. It's much the best big shop in Paris."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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