"Like that too?"
He sat a little back into his chair as though he felt he had put her in a corner now, and when she said she even liked that too, twitched his cheek a little in contempt for such a lie and went on playing.
But the remark worked something in him, for five minutes later he pursued:
"I don't see anything in the French. They ain't clean. They ain't generous. They ain't up-to-date nor comfortable."
Fanny played out her domino.
"They don't know how to live," he said more violently than he had spoken yet.
"What's living?" she said quickly. "What is it to live, if you know?"
"You want to put yourself at something, an' build up. Build up your fortune and spread it out and about, and have your house so's people know you've got it. I want to get home and be doing it."
"Mademoiselle actually knows it!" said Julien in the doorway to the red-haired woman in the back room, and Fanny jumped up.
The American passed four iron coins across the table. "'Tisn't going to hinder that fortune I'm going to make," he said, smiling at last.