"And there's about ten dollars remaining," Cassy resumed. "Ten dollars and a penny. You can have the penny and I will keep the ten, or I'll keep the ten and you can have the penny."
That also seemed natural. But the addition or subtraction disclosed a deficit and he exclaimed at it. "You said two hundred and fifty!"
Cassy too saw the hole, but she could not lie out of it. "Well, I owed the difference."
In speaking she turned. Before her was a mirror in which she glanced at her hair that had been superiorly tralala'd. She turned again, reflecting that Lennox must have already received the postal-order, which she had mailed the night before, and wondering whether he had liked her little scrawl of indignant thanks.
"I'll tell you about it later," she added. "Now I must get your dinner. How would you like a tenderloin, a salad, and a box of Camembert?"
He shuffled. "There is no Camembert any more." The tragedy of that seemed to overwhelm him. "I wish I were dead."
Cassy laughed. "Now it's the cheese. On Saturday it was the violin. Well, you got it back. What will you say if I find some Camembert? Do stop meowing. Any one might think you didn't have me."
At her young laughter, he groaned. "Formerly if I let a day go without practising, I noticed it. If I let two days go, Toscanini noticed it. Now it's weeks and weeks. It's killing me."
To cheer him, Cassy said gaily: "The artist never dies."
But it did not cheer him. Besides, though Cassy had laughed, there had been a tugging at her heartstrings. Shabby, unkempt, in a frayed dressing-gown, his arm in a dismal sling, he looked so out of it, so forlorn, so old.