on as to make him utterly hopeless for such an attempt.
She hoped to keep him straight with that enormous bribe. She was
clearly a woman uncommon enough to live without illusions--which, of
course, does not mean that she was reasonable. She had said to herself,
perhaps with a fury of self-contempt. "In a few years I shall be too
old for anybody. Meantime I shall have him--and I shall hold him by
throwing to him the money of that ordinary, silly, little girl of no
account." Well, it was a desperate expedient--but she thought it worth
while. And besides there is hardly a woman in the world, no matter how
hard, depraved or frantic, in whom something of the maternal instinct
does not survive, unconsumed like a salamander, in the fires of the most
abandoned passion. Yes there might have been that sentiment for him
too. There _was_ no doubt. So I say again: No wonder! No wonder that
she raged at everything--and perhaps even at him, with contradictory
reproaches: for regretting the girl, a little fool who would never in
her life be worth anybody's attention, and for taking the disaster
itself with a cynical levity in which she perceived a flavour of revolt.

And so the altercation in the night went on, over the irremediable. He
arguing, "What's the hurry? Why clear out like this?" perhaps a little
sorry for the girl and as usual without a penny in his pocket,
appreciating the comfortable quarters, wishing to linger on as long as
possible in the shameless enjoyment of this already doomed luxury.
There was really no hurry for a few days. Always time enough to vanish.
And, with that, a touch of masculine softness, a sort of regard for
appearances surviving his degradation: "You might behave decently at the
last, Eliza." But there was no softness in the sallow face under the
gala effect of powdered hair, its formal calmness gone, the dark-ringed
eyes glaring at him with a sort of hunger. "No! No! If it is as you
say then not a day, not an hour, not a moment." She stuck to it, very
determined that there should be no more of that boy and girl
philandering since the object of it was gone; angry with herself for
having suffered from it so much in the past, furious at its having been
all in vain.

But she was reasonable enough not to quarrel with him finally. What was
the good? She found means to placate him. The only means. As long as
there was some money to be got she had hold of him. "Now go away. We
shall d