“I couldn’t recite badly to you.”
“But what will . . . ?”
She was going to ask what Gertrude would do while he starved in London, but she could not force Gertrude’s name to her lips and she broke off the question, and covered her awkwardness by throwing a twig into the water and watching it float down the stream. Bennett seemed to know what she was going to say, for he became suddenly embarrassed and his excited confidence oozed from him. He threw her back on herself by asking:
“What are you going to do?”
“I—I don’t know. Just go on.”
“I couldn’t do that. Anything’s better than just going on.”
“But it’s different for you. You’re a man.”
“Yes,” said Bennett, pleased by the reflection that, after all, he was a man. “Yes, I suppose it is more difficult for a woman. But I shan’t run away. I shall just go on and on being a clerk all the rest of my life.”
He was appealing to her for pity; in vain. Annette said, cheerfully:
“There must be thousands of men who are clerks, and they can’t all be so wretched.”