He wondered. "Why did you do that?"
"Oh I want her."
He walked to the window, where the curtains had not been drawn, and saw in the dusk a cab at the door. When he turned back he went on: "Why won't you trust me to make you like me, as you call it, better? If I make you like me as well as I like you it will be about enough, I think."
"Oh I like you enough for your happiness. And I don't throw away a devotion," Mrs. Dallow continued. "I shall be constantly kind to you. I shall be beautiful to you."
"You'll make me lose a fortune," Nick after a moment said.
It brought a slight convulsion, instantly repressed, into her face. "Ah you may have all the money you want!"
"I don't mean yours," he answered with plenty of expression of his own. He had determined on the instant, since it might serve, to tell her what he had never breathed to her before. "Mr. Carteret last year promised me a pot of money on the day we should be man and wife. He has thoroughly set his heart on it."
"I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Carteret," said Julia. "I'll go and see him. I'll make it all right," she went on. "Then your work, you know, will bring you an income. The great men get a thousand just for a head."
"I'm only joking," Nick returned with sombre eyes that contradicted this profession. "But what things you deserve I should do!"
"Do you mean striking likenesses?"