and then gave him back his look
"How should I know? It’s a lot of money," she stammered, shaken out of her self-possession. She had not expected so prompt a sequel to the dealer’s visit, and she was vexed with him for writing to Raymond without consulting her. But she recognized Moffatt’s high-handed way, and her fears faded in the great blaze of the sum he offered.
Her husband was still looking at her. "It was Fleischhauer who brought a man down to see the tapestries one day when I was away at Beaune?"
He had known, then–everything was known at Saint Desert!
She wavered a moment and then gave him back his look.
"Yes–it was Fleischhauer; and I sent for him."
"You sent for him?"
He spoke in a voice so veiled and repressed that he seemed to be consciously saving it for some premeditated outbreak. Undine felt its menace, but the thought of Moffatt sent a flame through her, and the words he would have spoken seemed to fly to her lips.
"Why shouldn’t I? Something had to be done. We can’t go on as we are. I’ve tried my best to economize–I’ve scraped and scrimped, and gone without heaps of things I’ve always had. I’ve moped for months and months at Saint Desert, and given up sending Paul to school because it was too expensive, and asking my friends to dine because we couldn’t afford it. And you expect me to go on living like this for the rest of my life, when all you’ve got to do is to hold out your hand and have two million francs drop into it!"
Her husband stood looking at her coldly and curiously, as though she were some alien apparition his eyes had never before beheld.
"Ah, that’s your answer–that’s all you feel when you lay hands on things that are sacred to us!" He stopped a moment, and then let his voice break out with the volume she had felt it to be gathering. "And you’re all alike," he exclaimed, "every one of you. You come among us from a country we don’t know, and can’t imagine, a country you care for so little that before you’ve been a day in ours you’ve forgotten the very house you were born in–if it wasn’t torn down before you knew it!
Processing your request, Please wait....
