"Why not? Why can't you?"
"I should hate your asking him, and I simply couldn't ask him myself."
"Why do you hate my asking him? You said nothing against my asking Grantley, and we haven't known him any better."
She had no answer to that ready. The thrust was awkward.
"Anyhow I couldn't ask him—I really couldn't. Don't press me to do that. If you must ask him, do it yourself. Why should I do it?"
"Why, because he's more likely to give it to you."
"But that's—that's so unfair. To send a woman because it's harder to refuse her! Oh, that isn't fair, John!"
"Fair! Good heavens, can't you understand how we're situated? It's ruin if we don't get it—and I'm damned if I'll live to see it! There!"
She saw his passion; his words confirmed her secret fear. She saw, too, how in the stress of danger he would not stand on scruples or be baulked by questions of taste or of social propriety. He saw possible salvation, and jumped at any path to it; and the responsibility of refusing to tread the path he put on her, with all it might mean.
"If I went and he said 'No,' you couldn't go afterwards. But you can go first, and you must go."