“You’ll stop now. Please say you’ll stop.”
“No, I want sixty.”
She was silent, staring with troubled eyes before her, her embroidery in her lap.
“Wake up,” he laughed. “You’re in a trance. What are you thinking of,—your dowry?”
“No, of that rose-covered cottage.”
“Oh, that.... I say, you’re not going on with that embroidery for the sake of making a measly five francs a day?”
“Why not? It’s clean money.”
“Don’t you think this money is clean?”
“No, I might have thought so once; but now ... I’ve had my lesson.”
“I haven’t. It’s good enough for me. Why, it would take me twenty years to save this money in the usual way, and make a wreck of me at the same time. Life’s too hard a battle. We can’t afford to choose our weapons.”