“How I am to earn enough sous for my dinner to-morrow—or failing that, what I can sell.”
His face darkened.
“And yet,” he said, “you bid me talk cheerfully, or not at all.”
“Why not? Your spirits at least should be good. It is not you who runs the risk of going dinnerless to-morrow.”
He turned upon her almost fiercely.
“You know,” he muttered, “you know quite well that your troubles are far more likely to weigh upon me than my own. Do you think that I am utterly selfish?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Troubles, my friend,” she exclaimed lightly. “But I have no troubles.”
He stared at her incredulously, and she laughed very softly.
“What a gloomy person you are!” she murmured. “You call yourself an artist—but you have no temperament. The material cares of life hang about your neck like a millstone. A doubt as to your dinner to-morrow would make you miserable to-night. You know I call that positively wicked. It is not at all what I expected either. On the whole, I think that I have been disappointed with the life here. There is so little abandon, so little real joyousness.”