“But what society? Society of Egypt! Many ladies who are more truly ladies than you don’t spend half what you do. I have inquired and know very well.”
“Yes, your Fifi told you, your Fifi, for whom you pay much larger bills than you do for your wife.”
Never had his wife uttered the name of the stage dancer until that moment, and he had believed her to be quite ignorant of his amours. He reddened up to his hair, frowned, and shook himself as if he had been stung by a viper, and the conversation became embittered even to brutality.
“Ah! jealous, and impertinent too! It seems to me that when one has not brought a halfpenny of dowry there ought to be a little more modesty and economy.”
“Good, very good, sir! I have brought youth and beauty as a dowry, and a dowry besides; yes, you insolent man, a good dowry, a large sum which was lost in the failure of the Bank of Turin. And is that my fault? And you, what have you brought me? A bald head, false teeth, and a body eaten through with vice—a fine patrimony, truly.”
“Ah, you had a dowry, had you? I have never seen it; the only treasure I have seen is the gold with which your teeth are stopped. Sell that and pay the dressmaker’s bill with it.”
The bill flew in the air and fell at the woman’s feet.
The husband went out of the room, slamming the door so loudly as to make the little Japanese figures and the other bric-a-brac on the table tremble. And the wife, lighting a fresh cigarette, set to, with all the force of her intellect, to invent some revenge worthy of the insult received.