"I shall get on, you know. I shall do something great in Fleet Street, one day. There's no knowing where I shall stop. And then there are the books I mean to write. Oh yes! Kenneth's sown the seeds of book-writing in me. And plays ... plays are the things to make money with...."
"You won't need money," she said, kindly. "I have enough for both of us."
"Dearest," he answered. (It seemed the most natural thing in the world, now, that he should call her "dearest.") "You must not say that.... You won't mind waiting, just a little, will you? Until I feel I can come to you and say that I do not need your money.... I can't explain it ... I should never be happy if I took a penny from you."
She took his hand and caressed it. "I like you all the better for that, Humphrey." (He noticed that she did not use the word "love.")
He saw the future splendid, and roseate. He thought, with a smile, of Ferrol. Ferrol could not check him now. He had made his own identity, he was conscious of his own will to achieve that which he set out to do. Besides, there was such a difference between Lilian and Elizabeth.
He emerged from the house, a new being in a new world, living in the amazement of the last hour.
IX
It seemed strange to him that, with such a change in his life, the old work should proceed unaltered: he stood in Rivers' room, listening to Rivers' talk and banter as the news-editor gave him his work to do; he came before Selsey at night, copy in hand; he mingled with the reporters in their big, bare room, talking of the day's paper, and discussing their jobs and their troubles with them; he came into that close, personal contact with men whom he knew, and men who knew him, and yet there was always an abyss that divided his two lives.