“Well?”
“Nothing—finish.”
“—He would be certain to offer a reward. And I guessed he wouldn't mind what he paid. So I thought I'd take the cat and hang on till he offered L500, or till I thought he'd be so glad to get the Rose back that he'd do what I want out of pure gratitude. Then I'd bring it back and get the money—say I'd found it, you see, and—and—wait a bit—for heaven's sake don't speak yet.” George saw his Mary was bursting with words; as he judged the look in her eyes they were words he had reason to fear. Shirking their hurt, he hurried along. “Don't speak yet. Get the money, and then we'd save up and pay him back and then tell him. There!”
She burst out: “But, George—how could you? Oh, it's wrong—it's awful! Why, do you know what people would call you? They'd say you're a—yes, they'd say you're a—”
He snatched the terrible word from her lips with a kiss.
“They'd say I was a fool if I let Marrapit do me out of what is my own. That's the point, Mary. It's my money. I'm only trying to get what is my own. I felt all along you would see that; otherwise—” He hesitated. He was in difficulties. Manlike, he suddenly essayed to shoot the responsibility upon the woman. “—Otherwise I wouldn't have done it,” he ended.
His Mary had the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust with the trident: “If you thought that, why didn't you tell me?”
The thrust staggered him; set him blustering: “Tell you! Tell you! How could I tell you? I did it on the spur of the moment.”
“You could have written. Oh, Georgie, it's wrong. It is wrong.”
He took up the famous sex attack. “Wrong! Wrong! That's just like a woman to say that! You won't listen to reason. You jump at a thing and shut your eyes and your ears.”