Mary's throat ached painfully. He was utterly unconscious of any hurt to her in the transfer of this first extravagance of theirs. If he had done it consciously, with intent to wound, she thought it might have hurt her less.
"It's very pretty," she said conventionally.
"Bare, perhaps, rather than pretty," murmured Miss Berber behind her veil of smoke.
Mary flushed. This woman had a trick of always making her appear gauche. She looked at her watch, not sorry to see that it was already time to leave.
"I must go, Stefan, I have to catch the one o'clock," she said, holding out her hand.
"What a shame. Can't you even stay to lunch?" he asked dutifully. She shook her head, the ache in her throat making speech difficult. She seemed very stiff and matter-of-fact, he thought, and her clothes were uninteresting. He kissed her, however, and held the door while she shook hands with Felicity, who half rose. The transom was open, and through it Mary, who had paused on the landing to button her glove, overheard Miss Berber's valedictory pronouncement.
"The English are a remarkable race--remarkable. Character in them is fixed--in us, fluid."
Mary sped down the first flight, in terror of hearing Stefan's reply.
All that evening she held the baby in her arms--she could hardly bring herself to put him down when it was time to go to bed.
On November the 1st Mary received their joint bank book. The figures appalled her. She had drawn nothing except for the household bills, but Stefan had apparently been drawing cash, in sums of fifty or twenty-five dollars, every few days for weeks past. Save for his meals and a little new clothing she did not know on what he could have spent it; but as they had made nothing since the sale of his drawings in the spring, their once stout balance had dwindled alarmingly. One check, even while she felt its extravagance, touched her to sympathy. It was drawn to Henrik Jensen for two hundred dollars. Stefan must have been helping Adolph's brother to his feet again; perhaps that was where more of the money had gone.
Stefan came home that afternoon, and Mary very unwillingly tackled the subject. He looked surprised.
"I'd no idea I'd been drawing so much! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he exclaimed. "Yes, I've given poor old Henrik a bit from time to time; I thought I'd mentioned it to you."