“You have always been like a daughter to me—to us—and now I want to claim the right to provide for you and your children.”
Still I refused. I promised again to go to him if ever I was in real need; but I took nothing.
When he died others inherited all he had.
There are only two crimes in Society: one to be poor, the other to be found out.
It seems to me that everything in life is relative. If one is born poor, one does not know what it is to be rich, and if one is rich, one does not understand the responsibilities of strawberry leaves, and strawberry leaves do not comprehend the difficulties of a throne.
If things change, if one goes up in the world, one naturally assimilates ideas and ways by merely taking on a little more of what one already has; but if one slides back in life, one has to give up what is part and parcel of one’s very existence. I was not born in a back street or a country cottage or a suburban villa—in either of these I might have lived in simple comfort on my small income—but that would not have been me.
Bills came in on every side. Bills haunted me. Bills were nothing in my old life when they were paid up every quarter; but even a few hundreds meant sleepless nights of haunting fear to me now.
I took up my pen feverishly. Nine years of married life were ended. All was changed. Still, during those first few months of shock, my father yet lived, and I knew I could rely on his help, so it was not until the late autumn of 1896 that I realised my position in all its cruelty.