way, and came to a position whence he could see her face, but
kept at a distance.

'Yes,' he said, in a different way, 'that's the worst of it.'

'What is?'

'That you--well, it's no use.'

'That I--what?'

She did not look at him; her lips, after she had spoken, drew in a
little.

'That your disposition towards me is being affected by this miserable
failure. You keep saying to yourself that I am not what you thought me.
Perhaps you even feel that I have been guilty of a sort of deception. I
don't blame you; it's natural enough.'

'I'll tell you quite honestly what I do think,' she replied, after a
short silence. 'You are much weaker than I imagined. Difficulties crush
you, instead of rousing you to struggle.'

'True. It has always been my fault.'

'But don't you feel it's rather unmanly, this state of things? You say
you love me, and I try to believe it. But whilst you are saying so, you
let me get nearer and nearer to miserable, hateful poverty. What is to
become of me--of us? Shall you sit here day after day until our last
shilling is spent?'

'No; of course I must do something.'

'When shall you begin in earnest? In a day or two you must pay this
quarter's rent, and that will leave us just about fifteen pounds in the
world. Where is the rent at Christmas to come from?

What are we to live upon? There's all sorts of clothing to be bought;
there'll be all the extra expenses of winter. Surely it's bad enough
that we have had to stay here all the summer; no holiday of any kind. I
have done my best not to grumble about it, but I begin to think that it
would be very much wiser if I did grumble.'

She squared her shoulders, and gave her head just a little shake, as if
a fly had troubled her.

'You bear everything very well and kindly,' said Reardon. 'My behaviour
is contemptible; I know that. Good heavens! if I only had some business
to go to, something I could work at in any state of mind, and make money
out of! Given this chance, I would work myself to death rather than you
should lack anything you desire. But I am at the mercy of my brain; it
is dry and powerless. How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices
in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question
of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the
evening comes, they have earned their wages, they are free to rest and
enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's
only means