"Can't you? I should have thought you could have got most things you really wanted."
"I could if I were a grocer or a draper. Why, a hair-dresser has more mastery of the means of life."
He was telling her, she knew, that he was too poor for the quest of the matchless lady; and through all his young and sombre rage of frustration there flashed forth his anger with her as the unfit.
He began to tramp up and down the room again, by way of distraction from his mood. Now and then his eyes turned to her with no thought in them, only that dark, unhappy fire.
He was quiet now. He had caught sight of some sheets of manuscript lying on her desk.
"What's this?" he said.
"Only the last thing I've written."
"May I look?"
"You may."
He took it up and sat beside her, close beside her, and turned the leaves over with a nervous hand. He was not reading. There was no thought in his eyes.