“Oh, you are deep, and you are provoking!” murmured the Princess, with a sombre eye.
“Don’t you remember,” Muniment continued, without heeding this somewhat passionate ejaculation—“don’t you remember how, the other day, you accused me of being not only a coward but a traitor; of playing false; of wanting, as you said, to back out?”
“Most distinctly. How can I help its coming over me, at times, that you have incalculable ulterior views and are only using me—only using us all? But I don’t care!”
“No, no; I’m genuine,” said Paul Muniment, simply, yet in a tone which might have implied that the discussion was idle. And he immediately went on, with a transition too abrupt for perfect civility: “The best reason in the world for your not having a lawsuit with your husband is this: that when you haven’t a penny left you will be obliged to go back and live with him.”
“How do you mean, when I haven’t a penny left? Haven’t I my own property?” the Princess demanded.
“The Prince tells me that you have drawn upon your own property at such a rate that the income to be derived from it amounts, to his positive knowledge, to no more than a thousand francs—forty pounds—a year. Surely, with your habits and tastes, you can’t live on forty pounds. I should add that your husband implies that your property, originally, was but a small affair.”
“You have the most extraordinary tone,” observed the Princess, gravely. “What you appear to wish to express is simply this: that from the moment I have no more money to give you I am of no more value than the skin of an orange.”
Muniment looked down at his shoe awhile. His companion’s words had brought a flush into his cheek; he appeared to admit to himself and to her that, at the point at which their conversation had arrived, there was a natural difficulty in his delivering himself. But presently he raised his head, showing a face still slightly embarrassed but none the less bright and frank. “I have no intention whatever of saying anything harsh or offensive to you, but since you challenge me perhaps it is well that I should let you know that I do consider that in giving your money—or, rather, your husband’s—to our business you gave the most valuable thing you had to contribute.”
“This is the day of plain truths!” the Princess exclaimed, with a laugh that was not expressive of pleasure. “You don’t count then any devotion, any intelligence, that I may have placed at your service, even rating my faculties modestly?”
“I count your intelligence, but I don’t count your devotion, and one is nothing without the other. You are not trusted at headquarters.”