I'll send you anywhere," he said, "if you will
promise me--"

The words were hard to come, and while he stumbled over them she looked
up with a startled exclamation. Her glance travelling to his face, swept
over the desk beside which he stood and was arrested by the pile of
unpaid bills, which he had pushed, as he spoke, further away from the
lamp light. A hot, angry flush overspread her face, and she made a
nervous movement that brought her to her feet with a spring.

"You had no right to look at them," she burst out sharply, "they are all
wrong. Half of them were not meant for me."

The lie was so foolish, so ineffectual and without excuse, that he
flinched and turned his eyes away--for the shame of it seemed to belong
less to her than to himself. At the instant he was conscious of a
stinging sensation in his veins as of a man who realises for the first
time that he has fallen into dishonour.

"I did not mean to mention that--at least not now," he said quickly.
"We'll call it off and try to keep clean out of debt in the future. I
fear your allowance does seem rather shabby to you, but it can't be
helped. It takes every cent of the balance to run the house and pay my
life insurance."

He waited an instant, hoping that his matter-of-fact statement of the
situation--his freedom from implied reproach--might call forth some
expression, however slight, of her appreciation. But her glance flashed
over him, critical, disapproving, and he became aware, through a wonder
of intuition, that even at the moment she was possessed by her passion
for externals, was weighing his personal details as he stood in the lamp
light, and deciding impartially that he made but a poor physical
showing. Her unfavourable verdict was impressed upon him so strongly
that it produced a revulsion of anger. He felt, somehow, that their
positions were reversed, that she had him now at her mercy, and failing
to reduce him by flattery, had chosen to wither him by contempt.

"There's not a woman I know who could dress decently on what I have,"
she rejoined, skilfully adjusting him into the necessity of defence.

He gathered up the papers, and placing them in a drawer of his desk,
closed it sharply. There was a sordid indecency about the discussion
which stung him like the stroke of a whip.

"I am sorry," he returned coolly, "but I have done my best. There is
nothing more to be said." His eyes lingered for a moment on her thin
bosom where the bones w