here without you. If you get a chance like that it's wicked not to
take it. And I daresay you'd be able to have a girl to do the rough work."

Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the
difficulties of her life. He saw how important it was that each child
should be provided for.

"It's no good your carrying on, mother," said Sally in her quiet way. "I'm
not going to marry him."

"I think you're a very hard-hearted, cruel, selfish girl."

"If you want me to earn my own living, mother, I can always go into
service."

"Don't be so silly, you know your father would never let you do that."

Philip caught Sally's eye, and he thought there was in it a glimmer of
amusement. He wondered what there had been in the conversation to touch
her sense of humour. She was an odd girl.

CXVI

During his last year at St. Luke's Philip had to work hard. He was
contented with life. He found it very comfortable to be heart-free and to
have enough money for his needs. He had heard people speak contemptuously
of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. He knew
that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character
and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to
consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a
competency to rate it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life,
seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he busied
himself with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the past.
His recollection dwelt now and then on old friends, but he made no effort
to see them. He would have liked to know what was become of Norah Nesbit;
she was Norah something else now, but he could not remember the name of
the man she was going to marry; he was glad to have known her: she was a
good and a brave soul. One evening about half past eleven he saw Lawson,
walking along Piccadilly; he was in evening clothes and might be supposed
to be coming back from a theatre. Philip gave way to a sudden impulse and
quickly turned down a side street. He had not seen him for two years and
felt that he could not now take up again the interrupted friendship. He
and Lawson had nothing more to say to one another. Philip was no longer
interested in art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with
greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant.
He was occupied with the forming of a patter