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naughtiness and wants to reconcile himself with his mas-
ter.
‘I’ve been lunching with Harry,’ she said.
‘Have you?’
‘If you still want me to go away with you on Saturday,
Philip, I’ll come.’
A quick thrill of triumph shot through his heart, but it
was a sensation that only lasted an instant; it was followed
by a suspicion.
‘Because of the money?’ he asked.
‘Partly,’ she answered simply. ‘Harry can’t do anything.
He owes five weeks here, and he owes you seven pounds,
and his tailor’s pressing him for money. He’d pawn any-
thing he could, but he’s pawned everything already. I had a
job to put the woman off about my new dress, and on Sat-
urday there’s the book at my lodgings, and I can’t get work
in five minutes. It always means waiting some little time till
there’s a vacancy.’
She said all this in an even, querulous tone, as though
she were recounting the injustices of fate, which had to be
borne as part of the natural order of things. Philip did not
answer. He knew what she told him well enough.
‘You said partly,’ he observed at last.
‘Well, Harry says you’ve been a brick to both of us. You’ve
been a real good friend to him, he says, and you’ve done for
me what p’raps no other man would have done. We must
do the straight thing, he says. And he said what you said
about him, that he’s fickle by nature, he’s not like you, and
I should be a fool to throw you away for him. He won’t last

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