Mosserop, regarding her with a sympathetic gaze, recalled very clearly the gown she used to wear at the Museum. It was a queer colour—a sort of rusty greenish-blue; it was of common stuff, and made without a waist, in some outlandish Grosvenor Gallery fashion novel to his eye. The practical side of him stumbled at this memory. “But if you had to pawn things,” he said, “I should have thought these silks you have on would have gone first. That frock you used to wear at the Museum, for instance—you could only have raised a few pence on that—whereas these things—I’m afraid, my young friend, that you haven’t a good business head.”
“Oh, better than you think,” she retorted, with downcast eyes. Her further words cost her a visible effort. “I thought it all out, and I saw that my only chance was to hang on to these clothes. If people didn’t happen to look at my boots, I was all right. Men don’t notice such things much—you yourself didn’t at first. And my skirt would hide them, more or less.”
He looked at her averted face, slowly assimilating the meaning of what she said. Then he hastily turned his chair sidewise, rang the bell for the waiter, lit a fresh cigar, and blew out the match with a sigh which deepened into an audible groan.
“What else could I do?” she faltered, with a flushing cheek, and a tear-dimmed stare out of the window. “Nothing but throw myself into the river. And that I won’t do. They have no right to insist upon my doing that. If I was old and horrid, it wouldn’t matter so much. But I’m young, and I want to live. That’s all I ask—just the chance to live. And that I won’t let them rob me of, if I can help it.”
The waiter, counting out the change, embraced the couple in a series of calm, sidelong glances. He expressed polite thanks for the shilling pushed aside toward him, and closed the door behind him when he left the room with an emphasized firmness of touch.
Mosscrop rose. “Come, child,” he said, briskly. “Cheer up! Look up at me—let’s sec a smile on your face. A little brighter, please—that’s more like it. How we have wiped the slate clean! We begin absolutely fresh. Dry your eyes, and we’ll make a start. We’ve got those celebrated birthdays of ours to look after—and it’s high time we set about it.”
She stood up, and smilingly obeyed him by dabbing the napkin against her nose and brows. She moved across to the mirror above the mantel, and smiled again at what she saw. Then she looked down at her boots, and her face took on a radiance, which it kept, as she descended close behind him the narrow stairway.