'Let's sit here for a
little. No wonder you feel low-spirited, lying in that room all day.
I'd gladly have come and sat with you, but my company only seems to
irritate you.'

'What good can you do me? You only think I'm making you miserable
without a cause. You won't say it, but that's what you always think;
and when I feel that, I can't bear to have you near. If only I could
die and come to the end of it! How can you tell what I suffer? Oh yes,
you speak so calmly--as good as telling me I am unreasonable because I
can't do the same. I hate to hear your voice when it's like that! I'd
rather you raged at me or struck me!'

The beauty of her form had lost nothing since the evening when he
visited her in Farringdon Road Buildings; now, as then, all her
movements were full of grace and natural dignity. Whenever strong
feeling was active in her, she could not but manifest it in motion
unlike that of ordinary women. Her hair hung in disorder, though net at
its full length, massing itself upon her shoulders, shadowing her
forehead. Half-consumed by the fire that only death would extinguish,
she looked the taller for her slenderness. Ah, had the face been
untouched!

'You are unjust to me,' Sidney replied, with emotion, but not
resentfully. 'I can enter into all your sufferings. If I speak calmly,
it's because I _must_, because I daren't give way. One of us must try
and be strong, Clara, or else--'

He turned away.

'Let us leave this house,' she continued, hardly noticing what he said,
'Let us live in some other place. Never any change--always, always the
same walls to look at day and night--it's driving me mad!'

'Clara, we can't move. I daren't spend even the little money it would
cost. Do you know what Amy has been doing?'

'Yes; father told me.'

'How can we go to the least needless expense, when every day makes
living harder for us?'

'What have we to do with them? How can you be expected to keep a whole
family? It isn't fair to you or to me. You sacrifice me to them. It's
nothing to you what I endure, so long as they are kept in comfort!'

He stepped nearer to her.

'What do you really mean by that? Is it seriously your wish that I
should tell them--your father and your sisters and our brother--to
leave the house and support themselves as best they can? Pray, what
would become of them? Kept in comfort, are they? How much _comfort_
does your poor father enjoy? Do you wish me to tell him to go out into
the