“I paid them a hundred pounds the other day,” Molly answered. “I expect they’ll give us credit for a time.”
Alistair said nothing, but sat tapping the table with his fork, and thinking.
“I must sell some of my jewels, I suppose,” said Molly bravely, after a short silence.
Alistair looked up and studied her face.
“Why not sell the furniture and everything, and let’s clear out of this place? We can’t go on like this much longer, any way. What should you say to disappearing for a time?”
“Where to?” asked Molly, startled.
“Somewhere over on the south side. I thought of Lambeth. If we’re going to be poor, it’s best to live where everybody else is poor around us.”
Molly stared at him in consternation. In her ears the proposal, if it were serious, sounded like the end of everything. Molly had been born and bred in Lambeth. She knew what life there was. The idea of returning to it, after her experience of luxury, struck her as a dismal form of suicide. And not being able to divine the curious, half-romantic attraction which the scheme had come to possess for Alistair, she credited him with her own feeling of repulsion. The suspicion quickly followed that this suggestion covered a design to give her up. Stuart meant to demonstrate that it was impossible for them to live together any longer, and on that pretext to accept the offers of his family to rescue him.
The spectre of parting, never really laid, always peeping out at odd moments to grin at her, now showed its haunting features plainly, and she cried out with passion:
“No, no! Don’t talk like that! Don’t talk like that, Alistair!”