I thought I should drop down in one minute more, and hoped that I should die. I asked if he had enough to settle our bill and get out of town. He said afterward that he thought I had suddenly developed a propensity for shoplifting, and had been discovered, and that he would have to smuggle me out of the city.
He looked very serious though when I asked the question, and said: "Certainly, dear. We will not stay a moment longer than you wish to." He asked what had happened. I managed to gasp that I had spent all the money. He looked puzzled and said: "Well, go on. What is the matter?" and I repeated that I had spent all the money. It seemed heartless for him to torture me by making me repeat it.
He looked still more puzzled, and said: "Yes, well, what about it?" I said: "And there's a—a balance—a trifle."
He answered: "Of course-well?" And then—I don't know what happened then. I was sobbing, and Edgar kept frantically pouring cologne over me, and kissing me and saying: "Don't cry, for heaven's sake, Helen," and by degrees he managed to understand the situation, and before I knew it he was lying back in a chair fairly shouting with laughter, and my hair was dripping wet, and I felt as though I had passed through the resurrection, and found myself on the right side.
I finally found that there was no mistake, except that I had not spent the money for the right things; that I was supposed to have purchased all the little things like gloves and shoes and hats and a hundred other trifles with that, and that this frightful bill was to have been sent in to Edgar or me, beside, and settled then.
I may live to be a thousand, but that terrible hour will always be fresh in my memory. I was not unhappy. I experienced a despair that was truly tragic. And the reaction that followed!
Edgar Braine was never so dear and great and glorious before to me. He held me in his arms for two hours and let me cry. He tried to be sympathetic and serious, but every few moments he would burst out in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. He, too, says that he will never forget that hour.
I am still dazed over the situation. But the relief! Oh, the relief!
He says that I am to carry no money hereafter, for I don't like it. It seems—I don't know what. I don't like to handle it, and he says that I am to get anything and everything I want, and have the bills sent to him, and he will attend to them.
I shall know how to deport myself to-morrow, and know about what I want, for I find that I unconsciously noticed everything this morning, and am pretty well informed.