very sanguine until it came to definite proposals,
and then they became guarded and vague. He would part with them coldly,
and think over their behaviour, and get irritated on his way back, and
stop at some telephone office and spend money on an animated but
unprofitable quarrel. And as the days passed, he got so worried and
irritated that even to seem kind and careless before Elizabeth cost him
an effort--as she, being a loving woman, perceived very clearly.

After an extremely complex preface one day, she helped him out with a
painful suggestion. He had expected her to weep and give way to despair
when it came to selling all their joyfully bought early Victorian
treasures, their quaint objects of art, their antimacassars, bead mats,
repp curtains, veneered furniture, gold-framed steel engravings and
pencil drawings, wax flowers under shades, stuffed birds, and all sorts
of choice old things; but it was she who made the proposal. The
sacrifice seemed to fill her with pleasure, and so did the idea of
shifting to apartments ten or twelve floors lower in another hotel. "So
long as Dings is with us, nothing matters," she said. "It's all
experience." So he kissed her, said she was braver than when she fought
the sheep-dogs, called her Boadicea, and abstained very carefully from
reminding her that they would have to pay a considerably higher rent on
account of the little voice with which Dings greeted the perpetual
uproar of the city.

His idea had been to get Elizabeth out of the way when it came to
selling the absurd furniture about which their affections were twined
and tangled; but when it came to the sale it was Elizabeth who haggled
with the dealer while Denton went about the running ways of the city,
white and sick with sorrow and the fear of what was still to come. When
they moved into their sparsely furnished pink-and-white apartments in a
cheap hotel, there came an outbreak of furious energy on his part, and
then nearly a week of lethargy during which he sulked at home. Through
those days Elizabeth shone like a star, and at the end Denton's misery
found a vent in tears. And then he went out into the city ways again,
and--to his utter amazement--found some work to do.

His standard of employment had fallen steadily until at last it had
reached the lowest level of independent workers. At first he had aspired
to some high official position in the great Flying or Wind Vane or Water
Companies, or to an appointment on