She was looking down again, frowning and knitting her fingers together. She murmured something inaudible—it might have been protest or assent.
“But for that very reason,” I went on, “there should be no foolish embarrassment between us in such a matter. Your suggesting such seems like a reflection on my own inferior standing. If you want me to feel on the same social plane as yourself, you must regard this question of funds as totally immaterial. I should, believe me, if our positions were reversed; and so, I think, would anybody not a tradesman.”
Still she did not answer; but presently, and quite suddenly, she rose, and, going hastily into her bedroom, shut the door between us.
I was surprised—perhaps; or perhaps I was not. Anyhow, let that pass—and some subsequent days, during which nothing more was said on the subject. In the meantime life went on as before, and I, for my part, found it agreeable. We shared our differences impartially, as we did our amenities; and the money question was shelved.
Early in our acquaintanceship Fifine had cleaned the glass of the little picture by Auguste Ronsin that she so much admired. I don’t know why, but it always piqued me to hear her extravagant eulogies of this piece, which was after all nothing so wonderful, though it was out of the common. One day, when she was in her bedroom, I took the thing off the wall and hid it. She was not long in noticing its disappearance.
“Why have you removed it?” she asked me immediately.
“I want you, for a change, to praise something of mine.”
“Well, I do. Your plats are the most perfect things—models of tasteful cookery.”
“Je veux le croire, Mademoiselle. But I refer to the business of the palette, not of the palate. There comes a limit to welcoming praise of other people at one’s own expense.”
“If I praised a picture of yours it would be in spite of my not understanding it; and what value would my praise have then?”