"Yes! yes!" she cried out with joy. "I have been thinking of it myself, dearie. And do you know of what else I have been thinking? Guess, guess quickly, what your little wifie has been thinking of?"
She placed both hands on my shoulders, and smiling:
"Don't you know?... Really you don't?... Well! she has been thinking of having you come and live with her.... Oh! It'll be so nice to have a pretty little apartment where we shall be alone, just the two of us, to love each other, isn't that right, my Jean?... You'll work and I'll sit right next to you and do some needle work without making a stir, and from time to time, I'll embrace you to inspire you with great ideas.... You shall see, my dear, whether I am a good housekeeper or not, whether I can take care of all your little matters.... In the first place, I'll arrange your things in the bureau. Every morning you will find a fresh flower on it.... Then Spy will also have a nice little niche, all new, with red top-knots.... And then we shall hardly go out at all.... And we'll sleep as late as we wish.... And then ... and then.... Oh, how wonderful it will be!..."
Then getting serious again, she said in a grave voice:
"Not to mention the fact that it will be a good deal cheaper. Just about half!"
We rented an apartment on the Rue de Balzac and we busily fixed it up. That was an important task. We were shopping the whole day, examining rugs, choosing hangings, discussing arrangements and estimating things. Juliette would have liked to buy everything she saw, but she professed a preference for elaborate furniture, for loud-colored draperies and heavy embroidery. The glitter of new gold, the dazzling effect of harsh colors attracted, fascinated her. Whenever I ventured to remark something to her, she would say at once:
"How do men come to know about these things?... Women know better."
She was obdurate in her desire to buy a kind of Arabian chest, frightfully daubed up, set with mother-of-pearl, ivory imitation stones, and of immense size.
"You can see for yourself that it's too large, that it won't get into our house at all," I said to her.
"Do you really think so? Well how about sawing off the legs, dearie?"
And more than twenty times during the day she stopped in the middle of her conversation to ask me: