"You're ill," he said at last in a compassionate voice, "and there's nothing for you but to get out of New York as soon as possible."
She looked disconcerted, almost incensed, by the suggestion.
"You can't send me to Florida," she returned, "and that's where everybody goes at this season."
A trembling like that of faintness which is fought off by an effort of will ran over her, and he watched the pale, unsteady quiver of her eyelids.
"I will send you there—I'll send you anywhere," he said, "if you will promise me—"
The words were hard to come, and while he stumbled over them she looked up with a startled exclamation. Her glance travelling to his face, swept over the desk beside which he stood and was arrested by the pile of unpaid bills, which he had pushed, as he spoke, further away from the lamp light. A hot, angry flush overspread her face, and she made a nervous movement that brought her to her feet with a spring.
"You had no right to look at them," she burst out sharply, "they are all wrong. Half of them were not meant for me."
The lie was so foolish, so ineffectual and without excuse, that he flinched and turned his eyes away—for the shame of it seemed to belong less to her than to himself. At the instant he was conscious of a stinging sensation in his veins as of a man who realises for the first time that he has fallen into dishonour.
"I did not mean to mention that—at least not now," he said quickly. "We'll call it off and try to keep clean out of debt in the future. I fear your allowance does seem rather shabby to you, but it can't be helped. It takes every cent of the balance to run the house and pay my life insurance."
He waited an instant, hoping that his matter-of-fact statement of the situation—his freedom from implied reproach—might call forth some expression, however slight, of her appreciation. But her glance flashed over him, critical, disapproving, and he became aware, through a wonder of intuition, that even at the moment she was possessed by her passion for externals, was weighing his personal details as he stood in the lamp light, and deciding impartially that he made but a poor physical showing. Her unfavourable verdict was impressed upon him so strongly that it produced a revulsion of anger. He felt, somehow, that their positions were reversed, that she had him now at her mercy, and failing to reduce him by flattery, had chosen to wither him by contempt.