I found
them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,
Nick, say it's been worth it-say at least that it's been worth it!" she
implored him.

He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her
dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.

"How many letters?"

"I don't know... four... five... What does it matter?"

"And once a week, for six weeks--?"

"Yes."

"And you took it all as a matter of course?"

"No: I hated it. But what could I do?"

"What could you do?"

"When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think
I'd give you up?"

"Give me up?" he echoed.

"Well--doesn't our being together depend on--on what we can get out of
people? And hasn't there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you
ever in your life get anything for nothing?" she cried with sudden
exasperation. "You've lived among these people as long as I have; I
suppose it's not the first time--"

"By God, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing. "And that's the
difference--the fundamental difference."

"The difference!"

"Between you and me. I've never in my life done people's dirty work for
them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or
you wouldn't have hidden this beastly business from me."

The blood rose to Susy's temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;
instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare
lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she
tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter
too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to
escape his anger that she had held her tongue?

"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known," he
continued.

"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?"

"You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is
the price of our remaining together?"

"Well--isn't it," she faltered.

"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"

He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had
been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had
led.

Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the
causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered
her under its ruins.

Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the
window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his
back, an