At last the day came when she plucked up courage and demanded of Martin an account of his stewardship. He tried to evade the task by flourishing in her face a bundle of notes. They had heaps, said he, to go on with. But Corinna pressed her enquiry with feminine insistence. Had he kept any memoranda of expenditure? Of course methodical Martin had done so. Where was it? Reluctantly he drew a soiled note book from his pocket and side by side at a little table on the verandah, her fair hair brushing his dark cheek, they added up the figures and apportioned and divided and eventually struck the balance. Corinna was one franc seventy-five centimes in Martin’s debt. She had not one penny in the world. She had one franc seventy-five centimes less than nothing. She rose white-lipped.
“You ought to have told me.”
“Why?” asked Martin. “There’s plenty of money in the common stock.”
“There never was any such thing as a common stock.”
“I thought there was,” said Martin. “I thought we had arranged it with Fortinbras. Anyhow, there’s one now.”
“There isn’t,” she cried indignantly. “Do you suppose I’m going to live on your money? What kind of a girl do you take me for?”
“An unconventional one,” said Martin.
“But not dishonourable. To assert my freedom and live by myself in Paris and run about France alone with you may be unconventional. But for a girl to accept support from a man when—when she gives him nothing in return—is a different thing altogether.”
They argued for some time, and at the end of the argument neither was convinced. She upbraided. Martin ought to have struck a daily balance. He continued to put forward the plea of the common stock to which she had apparently given her tacit agreement.
“Well, well,” said Martin at last, “there’s no dishonour in a loan. You can give me an I.O.U. That’s a legal document.”