Eleanore did not hear what she had said. Her hope was gone. Daniel had been out of work for three months: who could explain his strange inactivity? The rent would be due in a short while, and then what?
One morning she went to Daniel’s room and said: “Daniel, we are out of money.”
He was sitting at the table reading; he looked at her as if he had to think for a while who she was: “Just have patience,” he said, “you are not going to starve.”
“I am doing all that I possibly can, Daniel,” continued Eleanore; “but tell me, please, how are you planning to keep the house going? I see no way out. Tell me, Daniel, tell me, please, what you are going to do.”
“A musician must be poor, Eleanore,” replied Daniel, and looked at her with eyes that seemed to be frozen.
“But he has got to live, I should think.”
“You can’t live from husks alone, and I am not going to work my head off for husks.”
“Daniel, oh Daniel, where is your mind? And where is your heart?” cried Eleanore in despair.
“Where I should have been long ago,” he replied, without the shadow of a ray of hope. He got up, and turning his face away from Eleanore, said in a half-audible voice: “Let’s have no argument, no cogency, no urgency. Not now! Not now when I am creeping along on the earth with such light as is left me, trying to grope my way out of the hole. A man doesn’t give up the ghost so quickly as all that, Eleanore. The stomach is a very elastic piece of skin.”