"But I'm getting on," he insisted. "The editor was very pleased with the way I handled that Kentish Town murder. They don't consider me at all a dud in Fleet Street. I'm sure I give everybody in this house quite a wrong impression of myself because I feel nervous and awkward when I'm here; but I don't think there's really much doubt that in another couple of years I shall be in quite a different position financially. Besides, I hope to do original work, and if a friend of mine can raise the money to start this new weekly—"
"Oh, if, if, if!" interrupted Norah, impatiently.
"Norah, don't you love me any more?"
"Of course I love you," she said. "Don't be so stupid."
"You seem different to-night."
"You wouldn't like me to be always the same, would you?"
"No, but—" He broke off, and turned away with a sigh to regard the melancholy street-lamps twinkling through the lime-trees at the end of the garden.
"I think it's I who ought to be angry, not you," said Norah. "I offered to marry you at once, and you instantly began to make excuses."
"Norah!" protested the young man.
"Oh, how I hate everything!" she burst out, looking round her with a sharper consciousness than she had ever experienced before of the drawing-room's ugliness and life's banality. At this moment Mrs. Caffyn put her head timidly round the door.