still?'

'I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from yourself. Go at
once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let things take their course
till now, it shan't be so in future. The responsibility shall be with
me. Only do as I tell you.'

'You know it's impossible--'

'It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say that we
are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going away for
your health, just three summer months. I have been far more careful of
appearances than you imagine, but you give me credit for so little. I
will find the money you need, until you have written another book. I
promise; I undertake it. Then I will find another home for us, of the
proper kind. You shall have no trouble. You shall give yourself entirely
to intellectual things.

But Mr Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a report. If he
has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.'

'But you amaze me, Amy. Do you mean to say that you look upon it as a
veritable disgrace, my taking this clerkship?'

'I do. I can't help my nature. I am ashamed through and through that you
should sink to this.'

'But everyone knows that I was a clerk once!'

'Very few people know it. And then that isn't the same thing. It
doesn't matter what one has been in the past. Especially a literary man;
everyone expects to hear that he was once poor. But to fall from the
position you now have, and to take weekly wages--you surely can't know
how people of my world regard that.'

'Of your world? I had thought your world was the same as mine, and knew
nothing whatever of these imbecilities.'

'It is getting late. Go and see Mr Carter, and afterwards I will talk as
much as you like.'

He might perhaps have yielded, but the unemphasised contempt in that
last sentence was more than he could bear. It demonstrated to him more
completely than set terms could have done what a paltry weakling he
would appear in Amy's eyes if he took his hat down from the peg and set
out to obey her orders.

'You are asking too much,' he said, with unexpected coldness. 'If my
opinions are so valueless to you that you dismiss them like those of a
troublesome child, I wonder you think it worth while to try and keep up
appearances about me. It is very simple: make known to everyone that you
are in no way connected with the disgrace I have brought upon myself.
Put an advertisement in the newspapers to that effect, if you like--as
men do abou