‘It will be best to know just where one really is,’ he thought, and he went off to find his wife and consult with her. It was seldom that he ever conversed with her on any matter of a practical nature; he had long since discovered that Haidee was bored by any topic that did not interest her, or that she did not understand. She scarcely grasped the meaning of the words which Lucian now addressed to her, simple though they were, and she stared at him with puzzled eyes.
‘You see,’ he said, feeling that his explanation was inept and crude, ‘I’d fully expected to have an awful lot of money out of the book and the play, and now, it seems, there won’t be so much as I had anticipated. Of course there will be Robertson’s royalties, and so on, but I don’t think they will amount to very much for the half-year, and----’
‘Does it mean that you have spent all the money?’ she asked. ‘There was such a lot, yours and mine, together.’
Lucian felt powerless in the face of this apparently childish remark.
‘Not such a lot,’ he said. ‘And you know we had heavy expenses at first--we had to spend a lot on the house, hadn’t we?’
‘But will there be no more to spend?’ she asked. ‘I mean, has it all been spent? Because I want a lot of things, if we are to winter in Egypt as you proposed.’
‘I’m afraid we shall not go to Egypt this winter,’ he said. ‘But don’t be alarmed; I think there will be money for new gowns and so on. No; what I just wished to know was--have you any idea of what you have spent since I transferred our accounts to Darlington’s bank?’
Haidee shrugged her shoulders. As a matter of fact she had used her cheque-book as she pleased, and had no idea of anything relating to her account except that she had drawn on it whenever she wished to do so.
‘I haven’t,’ she answered. ‘You told me I was to have a separate account, and, of course, I took you at your word.’
‘Well, it will be all right,’ said Lucian soothingly. ‘I’ll see about everything.’
He was going away, desirous of closing any discussion of the subject, but Haidee stopped him.
‘Of course it makes a big difference if your books don’t sell and people won’t go to your plays,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t bring money, does it?’
‘My dear child!’ exclaimed Lucian, ‘how terribly perturbed you look! One must expect an occasional dose of bad luck. The next book will probably sell by the tens of thousands, and the next play run for a hundred years!’