'I have to attend to my business, Kate.'
'Ah, your business! Your business! Mrs. Forest is your business; you've no other business but her now. And that is what is driving me to drink.'
'Oh, Kate, don't begin it again. I've a rehearsal——'
'Yes, the rehearsal of her opera and Montgomery's music. I did think he was my friend; yet he is putting up her opera to music, and all the while he was setting it you were telling me lies about Chilpéric, saying that I was to play the Fredegonde, and all the principal parts in the great Hervé festival, that the American—but there was no American. It was cruel of you, Dick, to shut me up here with nobody to speak to; nothing to do but to wait for you hour after hour, and when you come home to hear nothing from you but lies, nothing but lies! Chilpéric, Le Petit Faust, L'Oeil Créve, Trône d'Écosse, Marguerite de Navarre, La Belle Poule. And all the music I've learnt hoping that I would be allowed to sing it; and yet you expect that a woman who is deceived like that can abstain from drink. Why, you drive me to it, Dick. An angel from heaven wouldn't abstain from drink. Away you go in the morning to Mrs. Forest—to her opera.'
'But, Kate, there's nothing between me and Mrs. Forest. She is a very clever woman, and I am doing her opera for her. How are we to live if you come between me and my business?'
'Womanizing is your business,' Kate answered suddenly.
'Well, don't let us argue it,' Dick answered. He tied his shoe-strings and sought for his hat.
'So you're going,' she said; 'and when shall I see you again?'
'I shall try to get home for dinner.'
'What time?'