"What would you do?" I said hoarsely.
"I should just tell Cheneston that you adored and worshipped him, and if he didn't marry you he would utterly spoil your life. I should say you were too proud and noble to come yourself."
"You wouldn't do that," I said. "Mother—at least play the game!"
"Two can't do that," she said. "Your father does that. I pay the price."
XI
I used to wonder, in the days when love and marriage seemed very beautiful and interesting and tremendous food for speculation, but utterly removed from reality and me, what the woman felt like when the question of money first cropped up, whether it spoilt the idealism and romance a little, upset the atmosphere like a Ransome lawn-mower introduced into the Garden of Eden.
I used to wonder how I would like asking Cheneston for a new hat, and I always came to the conclusion that I would sooner wear the brim like a halo when the crown fell to pieces from old age than ask him.
I suppose if men love you frightfully they make the question of finance easy; but I think my experience with mother and father has rather terrified me, they made the mutual finance discussion so utterly degrading—and I think listening to them has given me a nervous distaste, a sort of hyper-sensitive shrinking from the discussion of ways and means.
It has always seemed so infinitely easier to go without things.
When I sat in the train and thought of asking Cheneston for five hundred pounds to pay father's card debts I felt sick, and I felt the real me starting to close up tight, like a sea-anemone when you poke it with your toe.