Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short. Muffat’s unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and had been doing his best to avoid it these three months past. With blinking eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking embarrassed the while and avoiding the count’s gaze. He was out of breath, and as became a man who had rushed across Paris with good news, only to find himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face was flushed and distorted.
“Que veux-tu, toi?” asked Nana roughly, using the second person singular in open mockery of the count.
“What—what do I—” he stammered. “I’ve got it for you—you know what.”
“Eh?”
He hesitated. The day before yesterday she had given him to understand that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a bill with she would not receive him any more. For two days he had been loafing about the town in quest of the money and had at last made the sum up that very morning.
“The thousand francs!” he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope from his pocket.
Nana had not remembered.
“The thousand francs!” she cried. “D’you think I’m begging alms? Now look here, that’s what I value your thousand francs at!”
And snatching the envelope, she threw it full in his face. As became a prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and then looked at the young woman with a dull expression of face. Muffat and he exchanged a despairing glance, while she put her arms akimbo in order to shout more loudly than before.
“Come now, will you soon have done insulting me? I’m glad you’ve come, too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance’ll be quite complete. Now then, gee up! Out you go!”