“Have you told me all? Is there nothing else to tell em about our son and the Jew?”
Gregorio felt he must now speak; it was not possible to keep silence longer. He was pleased that his wife had begun the conversation, for it seemed easier to answer questions than to frame them. “I have told you the whole story. There is no more to tell. It was by accident I found him in the bazaar, and that devil Amos was bending over him. I could kill that man.”
“Fancy if we had lost the boy! Think of the sacrifices we have made for him, and they would have been useless.”
“Have you made any sacrifices, Gregorio?”
The question was quietly asked, but there was a ring of irony in the sound of the voice, and Gregorio, to shun his wife’s gaze, moved into the friendly shadows. For some minutes he did not answer. At length, with a nervous laugh, he replied:
“Of course. We have both made sacrifices, great sacrifices.”
“It is odd,” pursued Xantippe, gently, as if speaking to herself, “that you should so flatter yourself. You professed to care for me once; you only regard me now as a slave to earn money for you.”
“Is it for our son’s sake also that you sit with Madam Marx, that you drink her wine, that you kiss her?”
Gregorio could not answer. He felt it were useless to try and explain, though the reason seemed to him clear enough.
“I am glad to have the chance,” continued Xantippe, “of talking to you, for we may now understand each other. I have made the greatest sacrifice, and because it was for our son’s sake I forgave you. I wept, but, as I wept, I said, ‘It is hell for Gregorio too.’ But when I looked from the window this afternoon I knew it was not hell for you. I knew you did not care what became of me. It was pleasant for you to send me away to make money while you drank and kissed at the Penny-farthing Shop. I came suddenly to know that the man had spoken truth.”
“The man! The man you bade me find. Because money is not gathered from the pavements. You know that, and you sent me out to get money. When I first came back to you I flung the gold at you; it burned my fingers, and your eagerness for it stung. But I did not quite hate you, though his words had begun to chime in my ears: ‘In my country such a husband would be horsewhipped.’ When you were kind I was little more than a dog you liked to pet. I thought that was how all women were treated. I know differently now. You will earn money through me, for it is my duty to my son, but you have earned something else.”