marry on?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to marry on that myself; not if it wasn't
regular. He's quite right, Flossie. You see, a man hasn't got only his
wife to think of."

"No--I suppose he must think of himself a little too."

"Oh well, no; if he's a decent chap, he thinks of his children."

Flossie's face was crimson, too, while her thoughts flew to that
unfurnished room in the brown house at Ealing. She was losing sight of
Keith Rickman; for behind Keith Rickman there was Sidney Spinks; and
behind Sidney Spinks there was the indomitable Dream. She did not look
at Spinks, therefore, but gazed steadily at the top of Mr. Partridge's
head. With one word Spinks had destroyed the effect he had calculated
on from his honourable reticence. Perhaps it was because Flossie's
thoughts had flown so far that her voice seemed to come from somewhere
a long way off, too.

"What would you think enough to marry on, then?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to do it much under four hundred myself," he
said guardedly.

"And I suppose if you hadn't it you'd expect a girl to wait for you
any time until you'd made it?"

"Well of course I should, if we were engaged already. But I shouldn't
ask any girl to marry me unless I could afford to keep her--"

"You wouldn't _ask_, but--"

"No, and I wouldn't let on that I cared for her either. I wouldn't let
on under four hundred--certain."

"Oh," said Flossie very quietly. And Spinks was crushed under a sense
of fresh disloyalty to Rickman. His defence of Rickman had been made
to turn into a pleading for himself. "But Razors is different; he'll
be making twice that in no time, you'll see. I shouldn't be afraid to
ask any one if I was him."

Vainly the honourable youth sought to hide his splendour; Flossie had
drawn from him all she needed now to know.

"Look, here, Floss, you say it's broken off. Would you mind telling me
was it you--or was it he who did it?" His tone expressed acute anxiety
on this point, for in poor Spinks's code of honour it made all the
difference. But he felt that his question was clearly answered, for
the silence of Razors argued sufficiently that it was he.

"Well," said Flossie with a touch of maidenly dignity, "whichever it
was, it wasn't likely to be Keith."

Spinks's face would have fallen, but for its immense surprise. In this
case Rickman ought, yes, he certainly ought to have told him. It
wasn't behaving quite straight, he considered, to keep it from the man
who