“I didn’t mean to say anything about it. I knew it would upset you.... Never mind, darling, I don’t care.”
“But I do. I tell you it’s driving me mad. Oh, what’s the good of talking when one can’t do anything! Look here, darling, I’m not fit to talk to you now—and besides, you’ll be frightfully late. I shall see you to-morrow.”
“One o’clock. Good-night, sweetheart. I wish it was you and me going to this show to-night. Wouldn’t it be heaven!”
“Indeed it would. But things may come right for us even yet, darling—don’t give up hope. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye!” she echoed.
Elsie was late for her appointment with her husband, but he did not complain. He seemed anxious to do everything in his power to conciliate her, and it was characteristic of their relations together that, as her fear of his sarcastic petulance vanished, so her contempt for him increased.
“I got dress-circle places,” said Williams impressively. “I know you like them.”
The piece, a musical comedy, amused her, and she was pleased at various glances that were cast upon her by their neighbours in the theatre. At the back of it all was a warm inward glow that pervaded all her consciousness at the remembrance of Leslie Morrison’s championship of her, his assurance that he would “think out a way.”
Perhaps Leslie would make up his mind to take her away. She had asked him to do so, and he had always refused. Elsie, with an ever-latent fear that Morrison was already beginning to tire of an attachment that to her was the one reality in life, told herself passionately that, with him, she would care nothing for poverty.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” said her husband’s nasal voice.