ches: for regretting the
girl, a little fool who would never in her life be worth anybody's
attention, and for taking the disaster itself with a cynical levity in
which she perceived a flavour of revolt.

And so the altercation in the night went on, over the irremediable. He
arguing "What's the hurry? Why clear out like this?" perhaps a little
sorry for the girl and as usual without a penny in his pocket,
appreciating the comfortable quarters, wishing to linger on as long as
possible in the shameless enjoyment of this already doomed luxury. There
was really no hurry for a few days. Always time enough to vanish. And,
with that, a touch of masculine softness, a sort of regard for
appearances surviving his degradation: "You might behave decently at the
last, Eliza." But there was no softness in the sallow face under the
gala effect of powdered hair, its formal calmness gone, the dark-ringed
eyes glaring at him with a sort of hunger. "No! No! If it is as you
say then not a day, not an hour, not a moment." She stuck to it, very
determined that there should be no more of that boy and girl philandering
since the object of it was gone; angry with herself for having suffered
from it so much in the past, furious at its having been all in vain.

But she was reasonable enough not to quarrel with him finally. What was
the good? She found means to placate him. The only means. As long as
there was some money to be got she had hold of him. "Now go away. We
shall do no good by any more of this sort of talk. I want to be alone
for a bit." He went away, sulkily acquiescent. There was a room always
kept ready for him on the same floor, at the further end of a short
thickly carpeted passage.

How she passed the night, this woman with no illusions to help her
through the hours which must have been sleepless I shouldn't like to say.
It ended at last; and this strange victim of the de Barral failure, whose
name would never be known to the Official Receiver, came down to
breakfast, impenetrable in her everyday perfection. From the very first,
somehow, she had accepted the fatal news for true. All her life she had
never believed in her luck, with that pessimism of the passionate who at
bottom feel themselves to be the outcasts of a morally restrained
universe. But this did not make it any easier, on opening the morning
paper feverishly, to see the thing confirmed. Oh yes! It was there. The
Orb had suspended payment--th