Sylvia regarded him disdainfully.
“Do you hear?” repeated Arthur. “I won’t stand it. It’s bad enough with that great hulking lout here, but when it comes to a greasy Jew I’ve had enough.”
“So have I,” Sylvia said. “You’d better go back to Hampstead.”
“I’m going to-day,” Arthur declared, and waited pathetically for Sylvia to protest. She was silent. Then he tried to be affectionate, and vowed he had not meant a word he said, but she brushed away his tentative caress and meek apology.
“I don’t want to talk to you any more,” she said. “There are lots of things I could tell you; but you’ll always be unhappy anyway, because you’re soft and silly, so I won’t. You’ll be home for dinner,” she added.
When Arthur was ready to start he looked so forlorn that Sylvia was sorry for him.
“Here, take Maria,” she said, impulsively. “He’ll remind you of me.”
“I don’t want anything to remind me of you,” said Arthur in a hollow voice, “but I’ll take Maria.”
That afternoon Danny Lewis, wearing a bright orange tie and a flashing ring, came to visit Sylvia. She had already told him a good deal about herself the night before, and when now she told him how she had dismissed Arthur he suggested that Monkley would probably find out where she was and come to take her back. Sylvia turned pale; the possibility of Arthur’s betrayal of her address had never struck her. She cried in a panic that she must leave Finsbury Park at once. Danny offered to find her a room.
“I’ve got no money. I spent all I had left on new frocks,” she bewailed.