“I know perfectly well what that means,” she said, turning on me with a scornful lip: “not in the least that you are shocked at my demeaning myself, but that you are in terror of my cookery.”
“That is nonsense,” I answered. “How can I fear the unknown?”
“Yet you say you would not like it?”
“Not like your so repaying me, I mean.”
“With bad for good, that is to say. Yet you are not the only one in the world who knows how to cook an omelet.”
“O, for heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed, “cook what you like! I am equal to anything, if it comes to that. A man who has dined, day in and day out, on ‘arlequins’ at two sous the plate in the Marché St. Germain is not likely to be fastidious.”
She stared at me incredulously.
“Have you really done that?”
“Often enough,” I said, “in my student days.”
She tossed her head, turning away: “I do not want to know about those. Please to leave it to me to perform the proper duties of a woman, while you go to your own, which you have been neglecting too long.”