‘I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from yourself. Go at once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let things take their course till now, it shan’t be so in future. The responsibility shall be with me. Only do as I tell you.’
‘You know it’s impossible—’
‘It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say that we are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going away for your health, just three summer months. I have been far more careful of appearances than you imagine, but you give me credit for so little. I will find the money you need, until you have written another book. I promise; I undertake it. Then I will find another home for us, of the proper kind. You shall have no trouble. You shall give yourself entirely to intellectual things.
But Mr Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a report. If he has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.’
‘But you amaze me, Amy. Do you mean to say that you look upon it as a veritable disgrace, my taking this clerkship?’
‘I do. I can’t help my nature. I am ashamed through and through that you should sink to this.’
‘But everyone knows that I was a clerk once!’
‘Very few people know it. And then that isn’t the same thing. It doesn’t matter what one has been in the past. Especially a literary man; everyone expects to hear that he was once poor. But to fall from the position you now have, and to take weekly wages—you surely can’t know how people of my world regard that.’
‘Of your world? I had thought your world was the same as mine, and knew nothing whatever of these imbecilities.’
‘It is getting late. Go and see Mr Carter, and afterwards I will talk as much as you like.’