"Since you have told her that I am just a poor hanger-on, and that you are the money end of the concern, the affair this time, my dear Letitia, is yours."
At present, I flattered myself I had scored one. Letitia had painted her position so luminously, and had etched me in in such somber tints, that I felt master of the situation. Perhaps it was cowardly, but as I had the name I might as well have the game. Although I had said little about the contemptuous treatment I had received from Leonie during the past week, I had felt it acutely. Like the Spartan boy, I had suffered in silence. Being American, and not even a little bit Spartan, this had been difficult.
Letitia was weeping silently, and I felt like a double-distilled brute. "I hate to talk to an artist in that way," she said sorrowfully. "Her temperament will be shocked. You can well imagine, Archie, that such a woman will simply despise us."
"But where's the French system of economy?" I asked wildly. "Where's the pot au feu with the delicious soup, and the daintily served meat? You said that rats would starve on the refuse from a French kitchen. Why, according to these bills, the refuse from ours would have fattened the entire menagerie at Central Park and the Bronx, including the elephants, tigers and bears."
"Now you're exaggerating," asserted Letitia plaintively; "you're making things out worse than they are. You're—"
I could not afford to argue. Facts stared me in the face. I had a small balance at the bank, which I should over-draw if I made out checks for these bills. The savings I had accumulated were drawing interest in the growing but by no means adult publishing house of Tamworth and Fairfax. I could borrow from Tamworth, of course, this week, but next week loomed up hideously as a sheer impossibility. Something must be done at once.
I rang the bell. "We must talk it over with Madame," I said desperately.
The kitchen, some distance away from the drawing-room, seemed strangely close. We could hear Madame and Leonie laughing weirdly, and though we both of us liked merry moods, this particular brand of mirth grated. There was a pause after my ring. Then Leonie appeared, wiping her mouth, and I told her that I wished to see her aunt.
"I—I think—she's gone to bed," the maid remarked, after a reluctant moment.