He rose abruptly.
“I’m walking up to the Sok,” he said. “Come along?”
They tramped up the long, steep hill-street together, and they did not speak till they had passed through the ancient gate into the unrelieved gloom which lies outside the city.
“I don’t understand you, Maxell—you take an old man’s view of things,” said Cartwright irritably. “You’re comparatively young, you’re a good-looker. Why the devil don’t you marry, and marry money?”
Maxell laughed.
“Have you ever tried to marry money?” he asked dryly.
“No,” said the other after a pause, “but I should think it is pretty simple.”
“Try it,” said the laconic Maxell. “It is simple in books, but in real life it is next to impossible. I go about a great deal in society of all kinds, and I can tell you that I have never yet met an eligible spinster with money—that is to say, large money. I agree with you,” he went on after a while, “a man like myself should marry. And he should marry well. I could give a woman a good position, but she’s got to be the right kind of woman. There are some times when I’m just frantic about my position. I am getting older—I am forty-seven next birthday—and every day that slips past is a day lost. I ought to be married, but I can’t afford a wife. It is a blackguardly thing to talk about money in connection with marriage and yet somehow I can think of nothing else—whenever the thought arises in my mind I see an imaginary beauty sitting on a big bag of gold!” He chuckled to himself. “Let’s go back,” he said, “the big Sok always gives me the creeps.”
Something lumbered past him in the darkness, some big, overpowering beast with an unpleasant smell, and a guttural voice cried in Arabic: “Beware!”
“Camels!” said Cartwright briefly. “They’re bringing in the stuff for the morning market. The night’s young yet, Maxell. Let us go up to the theatre.”