Next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with some embarrassment:
"Frank, I want to ask you something. I'm really confused about last night; we dined most wisely, if too well. This morning I found you had given me a cheque, and I found besides in my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. Did I ask you for it at the end? 'Tap' you, the French call it," he added, trying to laugh.
I nodded.
"How dreadful!" he cried. "How dreadful poverty is! I had forgotten that you had given me a cheque, and I was so hard up, so afraid you might go away without giving me anything, that I asked you for it. Isn't poverty dreadful?"
I nodded; I could not say a word: the fact told so much.
The chastened mood of self-condemnation did not last long with him or go deep; soon he was talking as merrily and gaily as ever.
Before parting I said to him:
"You won't forget that you are going on Thursday night?"
"Oh, really!" he cried, to my surprise, "Thursday is very near; I don't know whether I shall be able to come."
"What on earth do you mean?" I asked.