"What's the matter? What's the matter?"

But, by a violent effort, she had conquered her grief, and she replied,
with a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:

"Nothing. Only I have no dress, and therefore I can't go to this ball.
Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I."

He was in despair. He resumed:

"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable dress,
which you could use on other occasions, something very simple?"

She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering
also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate
refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally, she replied, hesitatingly:

"I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred
francs."

He had grown a little pale, because he was laying aside just that
amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer
on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks
down there of a Sunday.

But he said:

"All right. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a