“I simply can’t understand you,” I said, following him with my eyes from where I stood. “You say that you never lose self-control” (he had never really said so); “then why do you talk to me so strangely? I am ready on your account to sacrifice this pleasure, and then you, in a sarcastic tone which is new from you to me, insist that I should go.”

“So you make a sacrifice !” he threw special emphasis on the last word. “Well, so do I. What could be better? We compete in generosity⁠—what an example of family happiness!”