“Was it my mother?”
“No; a gentleman.”
Julian moved abruptly with a low exclamation, and began to walk rapidly up and down the little room absorbed in eager thought. Clemence watched him with a puzzled, surprised look in her eyes, and a little touch of reserve creeping over her face. At last he stopped suddenly and began to speak, looking anywhere but on her face.
“Look here, Clemence, I’m afraid this sounds an awfully blackguardly thing to suggest, but you’ll see it’s necessary. It won’t do for me to tell my mother just yet. To tell you the truth she is frightfully set against my marrying. I am done for all round as soon as she knows, and it would be just cutting our own throats to tell her—yet, you know. You see,” he went on hurriedly, evidently anxious to prevent her speaking, “you see, as I am I’ve got very good prospects. In a few years, if all goes well, I shall be making heaps of money at the bar—a fellow that is well known, you know, can always get on—and then it will be all right and simple. Meanwhile, you see, I have plenty of money, and we can be together almost as much as we like, quietly, you know. Whereas if we burst it all up now we shall just starve and be out of it all our lives. Don’t you see?”
He stopped awkwardly, but for the moment he had no answer. Clemence had listened to him, the expression of her face changing from wonder to incredulity, from incredulity to agony, from agony to the look of a creature stricken to death. She lifted her hand in the silence slowly and heavily to her head. Julian saw the gesture, though he could not see her face, and its heaviness somehow increased his discomfort.
“You see it’s only common sense!” he said impatiently.
“You mean that you want to go on living a double life—that you don’t want, don’t mean to try, to do right!” The voice was not like the voice of the Clemence he knew. It was low, distinct, and stern, and she spoke very slowly.
“I mean that I don’t want to ruin myself out of hand!” he said harshly. “Don’t be foolish, Clemence!”
“Ruin!” she said in the same tone. “You don’t know what real ruin means! I don’t know how to make you understand; I’m not clever enough. But I can tell you just this! I would rather die than have it as you say. For your sake, not for my own only, I would rather die. Until your mother knows the truth I won’t even see you or speak to you again. As to taking a penny of your money, I would starve first.”
Her tone, vibrating with intensity of meaning, was quite low. She was not declaiming or protesting. She was simply making her stand at a proposition so terrible to her that it had carried her beyond the bounds of emotion. For the moment Julian was startled and aghast.