He looked her in the eyes. “It has its compensations,” quoth he, in that curious cold tone of his that left one wondering whether he meant or not what he seemed to mean.
She knit her brows. “You... you feel the need of compensations already?”
“Faith, I felt it from the beginning,” said he. “It was the perception of them allured me.”
They were quite alone, the others having gone on into the room set apart for them, where food was spread. Andre-Louis, who was as unlearned in Woman as he was learned in Man, was not to know, upon feeling himself suddenly extraordinarily aware of her femininity, that it was she who in some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered him.
“What,” she asked him, with demurest innocence, “are these compensations?”
He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.
“Fifteen livres a month,” said he, abruptly.
A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very disconcerting. Then she recovered.
“Oh, and bed and board,” said she. “Don’t be leaving that from the reckoning, as you seem to be doing; for your dinner will be going cold. Aren’t you coming?”
“Haven’t you dined?” he cried, and she wondered had she caught a note of eagerness.