"About twelve dollars."
She gasped. "Do you mean to say that's all you have left?"
"Everything. But my rent is paid for a month in advance."
"Have you any debts?"
"Naturally. Two hundred dollars or so, that's all."
She came up to him and worked her finger into his buttonhole. "Francis Granthope," she said solemnly, "are you really—ruined?" Her eyes danced.
"Oh, I've got enough junk in my chamber to pay that off, I expect, but it won't leave me exactly affluent."
She burst into a delicious chime of laughter. "Why, it's positively melodramatic, isn't it? I never happened to know any one who was actually bankrupt before. Of course it must happen, sometimes, but somehow I thought people could always raise some money, even if they had to scrimp. How exciting it is—aren't you nervous about it? Why, I'd be frightened to death! And yet it seems terribly amusing!"
He laughed with her. "I can't seem to take it very seriously, while you're with me, at any rate. To tell the truth, I haven't begun to think about it yet. Of course my fees have always been in cash, and consequently there's nothing coming in. And I've always spent every cent I made, and a little more. But I've been broke before, and it doesn't alarm me, except that, of course, I can't depend upon living by my wits in quite the same way as I would have, if I hadn't chucked that sort of thing. If I didn't care how I did it, I suppose I could make a hundred or so a week easily enough."
She listened and grew more serious. "Of course that's all over. But you've got to have money! Let's see what I have with me." She took her purse from her bag and emptied it upon the desk. Several ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces rolled out.