“It is funny!” she cried. “Only the men who do not care about women are interested in women’s dress. And the men who like them never notice what they wear. Now you, for instance. I am sure you could not tell me what dress I had on last Saturday at your mother’s, while little Suequet, whose tastes, as everybody knows, are different, talks lingerie and chiffons quite prettily. He is a born dressmaker and milliner, that boy! Tell me, how do you account for it?”
“It would take too long.”
“You are sitting on my skirt, mon petit. While I think of it, Emmanuel says that you are neglecting him. Yesterday he expected you to come and see a horse that he wants to buy, and you didn’t turn up. He’s awfully annoyed!”
At these words Philippe broke into a torrent of abuse.
“Your husband bores me to tears. He’s a grotesque fool—and the most awful bore! You must admit yourself that pottering about all day in his stables, his kennels, and his kitchen garden—for he goes in for gardening too, the duffer—looking at the dogs’ food, the horses, and such-like isn’t what you might call exciting. And then when one comes to think of you and me, I must say it is a bit thick for your husband to hang on to me as he does. He’s such a fool that he makes people talk. It’s perfectly true, I tell you, people are beginning to talk.”
She answered him gently and seriously while she slipped on her skirt.
“Don’t abuse my husband, Philippe. As I am obliged to have a husband of some sort, it is a very good thing mine is like he is. Just think for a moment, mon petit, we might have somebody much worse to deal with.”
Philippe’s anger would not be calmed.
“And he loves you, the beast!”
She made a little grimace and shrugged her shoulders, as if to imply that that was not worth mentioning. That is how Philippe chose to interpret it, for he went on to enlarge upon the subject.