Your house--the smallest--and
servants--"
"House and servants!" interrupts the girl, "but why have a house
and servants at all?"
"I don't know," he rejoins curtly, "because the girl generally
expects those things when she marries."
"Not all girls," she says, and one seems to hear the smile with
which she says it in her voice.
"You mean rooms?" he says quickly, with a gleam of pleasure
breaking for a moment across his face.
"Well--say rooms--you would want three--thirty shillings, I
suppose, at the least, and then another thirty for board. That
leaves two fifteen for everything else."
"Surely that's a good deal."
"Oh, I don't know; think of one's clothes," and Stephen stares
moodily into the fire, with a pricking recollection of a tailor's
bill for twenty odd in his drawer at home now.
Then, to remove the impression of selfish extravagance he feels he
may have given, he adds:
"And a man wants to give his wife some amusement, and three hundred
a year leaves nothing for that."
"Amusement!" the girl repeats, starting up and standing upright,
with one elbow just touching the mantelpiece, and the firelight
flooding her figure from the slim waist downwards. "What amusement
does a woman want if she is in love with the man she is living
with? The man himself is her amusement! To watch him when he is
occupied, to wait for him when he is away, to nurse him when he is
ill--that is her amusement: she does not want any other!"
Stephen stares at the flexible form, and listens to the words that
he would admire, only the cynical suspicion is in his mind that she
is talking for effect.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113