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‘Oh, don’t speak to me, don’t speak to me.’
‘But what can it matter to you?’ asked Philip. ‘It’s really no
business of yours where I spend my summer.’
‘I was looking forward to it so much,’ she gasped, speak-
ing it seemed almost to herself. ‘I didn’t think you had the
money to go away, and there wouldn’t have been anyone else
here, and we could have worked together, and we’d have
gone to see things.’ Then her thoughts flung back to Ruth
Chalice. ‘The filthy beast,’ she cried. ‘She isn’t fit to speak to.’
Philip looked at her with a sinking heart. He was not a
man to think girls were in love with him; he was too con-
scious of his deformity, and he felt awkward and clumsy
with women; but he did not know what else this outburst
could mean. Fanny Price, in the dirty brown dress, with her
hair falling over her face, sloppy, untidy, stood before him;
and tears of anger rolled down her cheeks. She was repellent.
Philip glanced at the door, instinctively hoping that some-
one would come in and put an end to the scene.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said.
‘You’re just the same as all of them. You take all you can
get, and you don’t even say thank you. I’ve taught you every-
thing you know. No one else would take any trouble with
you. Has Foinet ever bothered about you? And I can tell you
this—you can work here for a thousand years and you’ll nev-
er do any good. You haven’t got any talent. You haven’t got
any originality. And it’s not only me—they all say it. You’ll
never be a painter as long as you live.’
‘That is no business of yours either, is it?’ said Philip,
flushing.

0 Of Human Bondage