street, as I can help him no more?'

She moaned and made a wild gesture.

'You know all this to be impossible; you don't wish it; you couldn't
bear it. Then why will you drive me almost to despair by complaining so
of what can't be helped? Surely you foresaw it all. You knew that I was
only a working man. It isn't as if there had been any hope of my making
a larger income, and you were disappointed.'

'Does it make it easier to bear because there is no hope of relief?'
she cried.

'For me, yes. If there _were_ hope, I might fret under the misery.'

'Oh, I had hope once! It might have been so different with me. The
thought burns and burns and burns, till I am frantic. You don't help me
to bear it. You leave me alone when I most need help. How can _you_
know what it means to me to look back and think of what might have
been? You say to yourself I am selfish, that I ought to be thankful
some-one took pity on me, poor, wretched creature that I am. It would
have been kinder never to have come near me. I should have killed
myself long ago, and there an end. You thought it was a great thing to
take me, when you might have had a wife who would--'

'Clara! Clara! When you speak like that, I could almost believe you are
really mad. For Heaven's sake, think what you are saying! Suppose I
were to reproach you with having consented to marry me? I would rather
die than let such a word pass my lips--but suppose you heard me
speaking to you like this?'

She drew a deep sigh, and let her hands fall. Sidney continued in quite
another voice:

'It's one of the hardest things I have to bear, that I can't make your
life pleasanter. Of course you need change; I know it only too well.
You and I ought to have our holiday at this time of the year, like
other people. I fancy I should like to go into the country myself;
Clerkenwell isn't such a beautiful place that one can be content to go
there day after day, year after year, without variety. But we have no
money. Suffer as we may, there's no help for it--because we have no
money. Lives may be wasted--worse, far worse than wasted--just because
there is no money. At this moment a whole world of men and women is in
pain and sorrow--because they have no money. How often have we said
that? The world is made so; everything has to be bought with money.'

'You find it easier to bear than I do.'

'Yes; I find it easier. I am stronger-bodied, and at all events I have
some variety, whilst you