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and the woman who kept the house said such things to me—
well, I might have been a thief the way she talked.’
‘I thought you were going to take a flat.’
‘That’s what he said, but we just took furnished apart-
ments in Highbury. He was that mean. He said I was
extravagant, he didn’t give me anything to be extravagant
with.’
She had an extraordinary way of mixing the trivial with
the important. Philip was puzzled. The whole thing was in-
comprehensible.
‘No man could be such a blackguard.’
‘You don’t know him. I wouldn’t go back to him now not
if he was to come and ask me on his bended knees. I was a
fool ever to think of him. And he wasn’t earning the money
he said he was. The lies he told me!’
Philip thought for a minute or two. He was so deeply
moved by her distress that he could not think of himself.
‘Would you like me to go to Birmingham? I could see
him and try to make things up.’
‘Oh, there’s no chance of that. He’ll never come back now,
I know him.’
‘But he must provide for you. He can’t get out of that. I
don’t know anything about these things, you’d better go
and see a solicitor.’
‘How can I? I haven’t got the money.’
‘I’ll pay all that. I’ll write a note to my own solicitor, the
sportsman who was my father’s executor. Would you like
me to come with you now? I expect he’ll still be at his of-
fice.’

0 Of Human Bondage