I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse.
"You've a cheque book—give me a cheque, then."
I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that night, the banks being closed.
"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stop fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn."
The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted and went out hurriedly without more words.
After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place" immediately or we should all be ruined.
Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must be the sink of every kind of corruption.
We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysées, and there (as well as in the cafés in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and Americans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strange that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to do, merely loafing round it like tramps—the richest being the idlest, and the idlest the most immoral.
My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma's instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.
"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us in places like those?"