“Oh, is that all?” The new barbaric effort was met by Bertha scornfully.
“No, that is not all.”
Catching at the professional figure his manner had conjured up, he ran his further remarks into that mould. The presence of his watch in his hand had brought some image of the family physician or gouty attorney. It all centred round the watch, and her interest in the time of day.
“I have found that this was only another fraud on my too credulous sensibility.” He smiled with professional courtesy. “At sight of you, my mood evaporated. But what I want to talk about is what is left. It would be well to bring our accounts up to date. I’m afraid the reckoning is enormously against me. You have been a criminally indulgent partner⸺”
He had now got the image down to the more precise form of two partners, perhaps comfortable wine merchants, going through their books.
“My dear boy, I know that. You needn’t trouble to go any further. But why are you going into these calculations, and sums of profit and loss?”
“Because my sentimental finances, if I may use that term, are in a bad state.”
“Then they only match your worldly ones.”
“In my worldly ones I have no partner,” he reminded her.
She cast her eyes about in swoops, full of self-possessed wildness.