"Oh, don't scold me, please, Edith," said poor Florence.
"I don't mean to; but really your queer ways of accepting Tom's favours exasperate me now and then."
"Perhaps I had better go to my own room," said Florence. "I am in your way, am I not?"
"When you talk nonsense you are. When you are sensible I delight to have you here. Lie down on the sofa once more, and go on reading this last novel of George Eliot's: it will put some grit into you."
Edith returned once more to her task, lit a strong lamp which she had got for this special purpose, put on her magnifying-glasses, adjusted her microscope, and set to work.
Florence knew that she was lost to all externals for the next hour or so. She herself took up her book and tried to read. Half an hour before this book had interested her, now she found it dry as sawdust; she could not follow the argument nor interest herself in the tale. She let it drop on her lap, and stared straight before her. How was she to do that which she said she would do? Her crutch was no longer available. The ghost who really supplied all her brilliant words and felicitous turns of speech and quaint ideas was not to be secured on any terms whatsoever. What could she do?
She felt restless and uncomfortable.
"I did wrong ever to consent to it, but now that I have begun I must go on taking in the golden sovereigns," she said to herself, and she took up the cheque for eighteen guineas, looked at it eagerly, and put it into her purse. Starvation was indeed now far removed. Florence could help her mother and support herself; but, nevertheless, although she was now well fed and well clothed and comfortably housed, she at that moment had the strongest regret of all her life for the old hungry days when she had been an honest, good girl, repentant of the folly of her youth, and able with a clear conscience to look all men in the face.
"But as I have begun I must go on," she said to herself. "To court discovery now would be madness. I cannot, I will not court it. Come what may, I must write that article. How am I to do it, and in twenty-four hours? Oh, if I could only telegraph to Bertha!"