"I don't know what you mean," the opera-bouffe singer replied.
"Our ladies know that the men whom they honour with their gay talk recognise their little whims, and merry extravagances as tokens of confidence which they would never dream of abusing. We never allow ourselves to step beyond the line which the lady herself draws. Familiarities like those which Capriani allowed himself toward you to-day are impossible among people of refinement. Of course from him nothing better can be expected; low fellow that he is!"
"And you are his hired servant," said Charlotte.
"Yes!" he replied, "I am his servant; it is my duty to select his horses and to write his letters, but I am not obliged to dine with him; that is not in the contract. And from this time I shall accept no more of his invitations. I will not expose myself a second time to the annoyance to which you and he subjected me to-day."
Charlotte began to cry. "You are cruel to me--and rough," she sobbed. "I have put up with poverty for your sake, sacrificed a brilliant career to my love for you----"
"Yes--yes, I know--I know--I am very sorry for you--but what can I do?" said Fritz.
"The only pleasure I can enjoy, you want to deprive me of, when I look forward to it from Sunday to Sunday."
"You enjoy it?--What, for Heaven's sake do you enjoy about it?" asked Fritz, to whom everything at these Sunday dinners was an offence, except the gentle eyes and soft voice of the hostess.
"I enjoy mingling at last in fine society," she said stubbornly, and as he only stared at her in silence, she went on, "I know that you despise modern fine folk. But my views are broader and freer, and I have no feeling for aristocratic chimeras!"
She had indeed no feeling for chimeras with or without the adjective, no feeling for moral and social subtleties, no feeling for honourable traditional superstitions, for fine inherited weaknesses and illusions, no feeling for all that constitute the moral supports of a caste, although they cannot be expressed in words or grasped with the hand. How could this woman comprehend Fritz, Fritz who had grown up with chimeras, who had made playmates of them in the nursery?