She lay awake, planning long and elaborate conversations that would imperceptibly lead him up to where he must see what she needed without seeing that he had been led. She carried out these ingenious conversations. She led him along, he docilely and unsuspectingly following. She brought him up to where it seemed to her impossible for any human being endowed with the ordinary faculties to fail to see what was so plainly in view. All in vain. General William Siddall gazed placidly—and saw nothing.
Several days of these failures, and with her funds reduced to a fifty-centime piece and a two-sous copper she made a frontal attack. When they went forth for the day's shopping she left her gold bag behind. After an hour or so she said:
"I've got to go to the Galleries Lafayette for some little things. I shan't ask you to sacrifice yourself. I know you hate those stuffy, smelly big shops."
"Very well," said he. "I'll use the time in a call on my bankers."
As they were about to separate, she taking the motor and he walking, she made a face of charming dismay and said: "How provoking! I've left my bag at the hotel."
Instead of the expected prompt offer of money he said, "It'll only take you a minute or so to drive there."
"But it's out of the way," she replied. "I'll need only a hundred francs or so."
Said he: "I've an account at the Bon Marche. Go there and have the things charged. It's much the best big shop in Paris."
"Very well," was all she could trust herself to say. She concealed her anger beneath a careless smile and drove away. How dense he was! Could anything be more exasperating—or more disagreeable? What SHOULD she do? The situation was intolerable; yet how could it be ended, except by a humiliating direct request for money? She wondered how young wives habitually dealt with this problem, when they happened to marry husbands so negligent, not to say underbred, as to cause them the awkwardness and the shame. There followed several days during which the money idea was an obsession, nagging and grinning at her every instant. The sight of money gave her a peculiar itching sensation. When the little general paid for anything—always drawing out a great sheaf of bank notes in doing it—she flushed hot and cold, her glance fell guiltily and sought the money furtively. At last her desperation gave birth to an inspiration.
About her and the general, or, rather, about the general, revolved the usual rich man's small army of satellites of various degrees—secretaries, butlers, footmen, valets, other servants male and female, some of them supposed to be devoted entirely to her service, but all in fact looking ever to the little general. The members of this company, regardless of differences of rank and pay, were banded together in a sort of democratic fellowship, talking freely with one another, on terms of perfect equality. She herself had, curiously, gotten on excellent terms with this motley fraternity and found no small relief from the strain of the general's formal dignity in talking with them with a freedom and ease she had never before felt in the society of underlings. The most conspicuous and most agreeable figure in this company was Harding, the general's factotum. Why not lay the case before Harding? He was notably sensible, and sympathetic—and discreet.