“Why aren’t you wearing your shawl?”
“My shawl? Why, I didn’t put it on because it’s too warm.”
“You had it on when you went out.”
“Did I?—Well, the truth is that I’ve lent it to a friend of mine who’s going to a party to-night; but she’ll give it back.”
“You are deceiving me, Virginie.”
“No, monsieur, I am not deceiving you.”
“I am costing you a great deal; and you deprive yourself of everything in order to take care of me, so that I may lack nothing! You are stripping yourself clean for me!”
“What are you talking about, Monsieur Auguste? I deprive myself of everything! Let me tell you, monsieur, that I deprive myself of nothing. Who told you that I am not well fixed, that I haven’t money put by?”
“And you work a great part of the night!”
“I work because it amuses me, and because I don’t care to sleep. The fact is that I have all I want; I had a hoard; I am certainly at liberty to spend it as I please.—The idea of telling me that he is a burden to me! How shameful of him! I, whom he has been kind to so many times! And he is angry because I am taking care of him!—Monsieur would prefer that somebody else should do it, perhaps. If you give me any more nonsense like that, I’ll throw the stew out of the window. As for my shawl, it’s true that I haven’t got it now; but I didn’t like it. In the first place, the color isn’t in fashion any longer; and then I don’t want a flower pattern—it’s bad form.”