As she looked at me, I said: "They told her you had not done as they expected about the shares. I rather gathered that there was some tendency towards feeling hurt."
"Hurt? On reflection, I saw that I had not the right to advise Jacques to speculate. What of it?"
"They do not view it as a speculation," I said.
"They! Much they know of business!"
"Did you take shares yourself?" queried Elise.
"The cases are not parallel," he contended, his voice rising excitedly. "Jacques is a poor man; I did not feel justified in letting him risk money."
"Oh, Henri," she wailed, "you know very well that was not the reason. It was not loyal of you; it was very, very wrong. Already it would have been a little fortune for them. No wonder they are aggrieved. I cannot be surprised—much as I have suffered this afternoon, I cannot be surprised at what I have had to hear."
"What you have had to hear? You have heard that I did not choose to assume the responsibility of conducting another man's affairs. And then? Ah, je m'en fiche! I am fed up with Jacques."
"I have had to hear you broke a promise because you were mean-spirited enough to blame him for your own gaffe to Martime," she cried. "Of my husband I have had to hear that! No, I cannot be surprised at what they said. They said it was petty and contemptible of you—and so it was!"
For an instant it was as if she had hurled a thunderbolt. Henri stood inarticulate, his eyes bulging from his head. Then, bringing his fist on to the table with a blow that made every ornament in the room jump, he roared: