"I think," he said, "you had better get Gaskell-Walker to manage things for you. It—it might be rather awkward for Paul. You see, we can't have her name brought into it"—there was actual reverence in his voice at the words—"and I'll have to take certain steps."
"Oh, I know," she said quietly. "She told us yesterday. Don't have any more in the papers than you can help, will you?" she added, "it's all so horrid."
"Oh, her name won't be mentioned at all—thanks to your kindness," he added, a little grandiloquently.
She looked at him with a queer expression. "I wasn't thinking of her name. I was thinking of ours—yours and mine, and the children's, Ferdinand."
He winced when she called him Ferdinand. It reminded him of some earlier, painful scenes in their life, when she had been unable to pronounce the shorter version of his name.
He rose and walked up and down the ugly room. "I hope you believe," he began, clearing his throat, "that I'm very sorry about all this. Such things are always unpleasant, but I assure you, Violet, that it—it was stronger than I."
"We needn't go into that. Have you enough money to live comfortably till your marriage?"
He nodded. "Oh, yes. I signed my papers with Barclay the day he went away, you know, and have been at the office every day. I—I intend," he went on, groping for words, "to give you half of my salary; that's two hundred and fifty a year, and I thought perhaps if you moved into a smaller house,—there will only be you and Guy then, and he'll soon be earning something—that—that you might manage to get on all right."
She nodded. "Oh, yes, I shall manage." She didn't add that up to this she always had managed to keep, not only herself, but, for the greater part of their married life, him as well.
"I'm sorry about that business of your books," he resumed, with another awkward pause, during which he took a cigarette out of a very beautiful new gold case, which he hurriedly stuffed back into his pocket. "I hope this new one will be a success. I do, really, Violet."