"Do you send all your customers away like that?"
"Well. You are not the first," said Sabine warmly.
And yet she was a little ashamed:
"It is too much trouble to tidy up," she said. "I put off doing it from day to day…. But I shall certainly do it to-morrow."
"Shall I help you?" asked Christophe.
She refused. She would gladly have accepted: but she dared not, for fear of gossip. And besides it humiliated her.
They went on talking.
"And your buttons?" she said to Christophe a moment later. "Aren't you going to Lisi?"
"Never," said Christophe. "I shall wait until you have tidied up."
"Oh!" said Sabine, who had already forgotten what she had just said, "don't wait all that time!"