“You haven’t let me down,” she flashed at him: and the sudden anger surprised them both. “Do you think I married you just for money? Do you think I want you to be like Rawlings? . . .”
“No”—somehow her anger soothed him—“of course I don’t.”
“Well then, why do you talk about letting me down?”
“Because, Pat”—he spoke slowly, fumbling for words—“a man’s got no right to marry a woman and have children if he can’t look after them. Two years ago, we had three thousand a year; today, we’ll be lucky if we’ve got six hundred. That’s failure, Pat. And you know what I think of failure.”
She remembered a similar conversation, long ago, at the Carlton.
“It isn’t your fault,” she said stubbornly. “And besides”—her voice grew very gentle—-“lots of people are very happy on six hundred a year.”
“In books,” he sneered.
“Peter”—she looked at him and he saw her eyes suffuse—“that hurts.”
The sudden change in her dumbfounded him. Always, they had talked openly, as man to man. Now, he knew instinctively that he must finesse. And he hated finesse—even in commerce. Yet he was sorry to have hurt her; told her so; tried to explain.
“It’s all right for some people, Pat. But it wouldn’t suit us. Imagine us living in a place like ‘The Limes.’ . . .”