“It costs a great deal, Georges, believe me,” urged Emilie. “You receive invitations; you don’t want to be considered mean; you must give a little dinner, however unpretentious; you have to do so again and again, and all this, mind you, you have to manage on two thousand seven hundred gulden, eh? Well, I fancy I can see you at it already. Especially your wife, who has to keep house on those two thousand seven hundred gulden, or rather on as much of it as you allow her. Anyhow, you won’t catch me coming to stay with you, do you hear?”
He laughed at her indignation, but still he did not yield himself vanquished.
“Emilie, don’t excite yourself about nothing at all, pray!” he said calmly. “Up to now ’tis all in the air yet, eh? I have not yet—taken a step—I don’t know even whether——”
He did not complete the sentence, hesitating to express in words the thoughts that seemed so disagreeable.
“Yes, Georges, I understand,” she replied, somewhat appeased by the calm of his voice; “but still financial circumstances can hardly be put off as second considerations; this much you will admit.”
“Of course; but you must not fix my budget too high. By the bye, dear,” he interrupted himself with a winning smile, “talking about a budget—just help me to arrange one, will you?”
“What! of a total of two thousand seven hundred gulden? Impossible, Georges, I am not equal to the task. Why, to live respectably in apartments, unmarried, you would want more.”
He sighed.
“Then we can’t agree about the matter at all?”
She shrugged her shoulders.