“What could you do?”
“When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think I’d give you up?”
“Give me up?” he echoed.
“Well—doesn’t our being together depend on—on what we can get out of people? And hasn’t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you ever in your life get anything for nothing?” she cried with sudden exasperation. “You’ve lived among these people as long as I have; I suppose it’s not the first time—”
“By God, but it is,” he exclaimed, flushing. “And that’s the difference—the fundamental difference.”
“The difference!”
“Between you and me. I’ve never in my life done people’s dirty work for them—least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or you wouldn’t have hidden this beastly business from me.”
The blood rose to Susy’s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it; instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she had held her tongue?
“You knew I wouldn’t have stayed here another day if I’d known,” he continued.
“Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?”