“Pourquoi pas?” And she went out of the shop where she had turned over everything and bought nothing—she was a difficult shopper—with the air of a tragedy queen.
If she would only be angry, Jean thought he might manage to keep the little golden coin of his pride, but she wasn’t only angry. She was angry at first, splendidly, furiously angry, till she saw it was no use. Then she melted and entreated Jean with that flexible, dramatic tenderness which attacks all the weak places in a man’s heart and tyrannizes over them; but still Jean held out. She made him feel that he was a brute and know that he was a fool, but he clung to his pride and faced her with drawn lips and haggard eyes.
“Please, please don’t tempt me, Liane,” he pleaded. “I literally haven’t a penny except some money, a very small sum, my mother left me, which I have promised to keep intact for an emergency. You don’t want me to use that? I don’t even know if I legally can, and you certainly can’t suppose that I will accept clothes from you. It’s just like you to be generous enough to offer anything you have, but it would be impossible for me to take it. I know I’m not very smart, my poor Liane, but try to put up with me as I am! Perhaps I shall make something by playing soon, and every bit of it shall go to a jeweller for you, and a tailor for me; only have patience.”
Unfortunately Jean asked Liane for the quality she most despised and least possessed.
“So you will not even do this one little thing for me?” she said, gazing tragically in front of her.
“I would do anything in all the world for you, Liane,” said Jean, his voice trembling, “but I can’t take money!”
Liane flung her pathos from her as if it were an old shoe.
“Bah!” she said. “That same old story, then! The things a man will do for you! How often have I not heard them! Hein! What are they, mon ami? First, die for me! You would naturally put this first, as it is the last thing I should ask of you! It is true you could die for me in any old suit, but how would it profit me? I am not a cannibal, nor am I a murderer. I do not desire the death of my friends! It would not contribute, this sacrifice of yours, anything to my safety, my comfort or my amusement! Anything! I again ask you—will you give up your Bank for me? No! You have already said that you cannot risk having no profession. I do not know what you call ten sous a month, but it appears that it may pass for a profession. You cannot offer me money—you have not got it. Talent? You will not use it. Beauty? Your friend Maurice with his ox eyes, his butcher’s moustache, his figure enlaced, presents something better to the eye than you. What then? Your wit? My poor Jean, you have just given me, it seems, a specimen. Pardon me if I prefer my own. You have not the sense to see that there are only two things worth having—money and life—and that one pays for the other! What can you do for me, then? I will tell you. You can take things when I want you to take them! But that, it seems at present, you can only do when you yourself want them! You are willing enough to take my time, for example, and also what you are so good as to call my charms? I introduce you into the artist world, I lift you here, I lift you there, I carry you about, I get myself even laughed at. They say: ‘The good Liane has turned nursemaid; behold how she trains her little one!’ I ask in return what? That you should not go about with me in rags from a country village. No, I do not care if the chauffeur hears or not—yes, rags! Yes! I say a suit left over from the year of your first Communion, and you say ‘No! this I will not do; this goes too far; this risks too much!’——”
“Liane,” entreated Jean. “The people on the pavement, everyone is staring at us!” Liane was enjoying herself. What if everyone was staring at them? She preferred an audience. She did not lower her tone at all as she continued:
“Mon ami, I am very reasonable. I am very calm, I am quite patient, moi! I say only this—” and she made a superb gesture with her hands which took in half the Bois de Boulogne, through which they were dashing at a magnificent pace, “which of us two is it, then, who asks too much?”