"I see." She was looking eastwards away from him, and her expression had changed; but it was still inscrutable. And yet by the turning of her head, he saw her mind moving towards a conclusion; but it was impossible to say whether she reached it by the slow process of induction, or by woman's rapid intuition. Anyhow she had reached it. Presently she spoke again. "Could you still get that thing, that partnership any time—if you tried?"
"Any time. But I'm not going to try."
She turned round abruptly with an air of almost fierce determination. "Well, if I get an offer of a good place, I shan't refuse it. I shall leave the Bank." She spoke as if so desperate a step would be followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution.
He was surprised to find how uneasy this threat always made him. The proverbial safety of the Bank had impressed him in more ways than one. And Flossie's post there had other obvious advantages. It brought her into contact with women of a better class than her own, with small refinements, and conventions which were not conspicuous at Mrs. Downey's.
"Let me implore you not to do that. Heaven knows, I hate you having to earn your own living at all, but I'd rather you did it that way than any other."
"Why, what difference would it make to you, I should like to know?"
"It makes all the difference if I know you're doing easy work, not slaving yourself to death as some girls do. It is an easy berth. And—and I like the look of those girls I saw you with to-day. They were nice. I'd rather think of you working with them than sitting in some horrible office like a man. Promise me you won't go looking out for anything else."
"All right. I promise."
"No, but—on your honour?"
"Honour bright. There! Anything for a quiet life."