she looked piteous, pitiable. He could not look at her.
"I came up here yesterday afternoon, meaning to tell you. You were so damned happy I couldn't get it out."
"So damned happy!" she repeated after him, and the words were strange on her white lips, her laugh was stranger still and made him feel cold.
"You haven't got to take it like that; we'll find a way out. I suppose, after all, it's only a question of money …"
"I cannot give her more money."
"I've got some. I can get more. You know I haven't a thing in the world you are not welcome to, you've made a man of me."
"It is not because I haven't the money to give her." She spoke in a strange voice, it seemed to have shrunk somehow, there was no volume in it, it was small and colourless.
"I don't know how much she wants. I have wired her and paid a reply. I daresay her answer is there by now. I'll phone and ask if you like."
"What's the use?"
"Well, we'd better know."
"He said that is what would happen. That she would come again and yet again." She was taking things even worse than he expected. "He will never give in to her, never …" She collapsed
