“Dishonourable?”
“Yes. I haven’t got enough money. I couldn’t ask her to share my poverty with me. I love her too dearly.”
I was nearly sick. The beast spoke in a sort of hushed, soft-music voice as if he were the self-sacrificing hero in a melodrama. The stained-glass expression on his face made me feel homicidal.
“Oh, drop it,” I said. “Poverty! Good Lord! Isn’t two thousand a year enough to start on?”
“But I haven’t got two thousand a year.”
“Oh, I don’t pretend to give the figures to a shilling.”
“You don’t understand. All I have to live on is my holiday work at the Orb.”
“What!”
“Oh, yes; and I’m doing some lyrics for Briggs for the second edition of The Belle of Wells. That’ll keep me going for a bit, but it’s absolutely out of the question to think of marrying anyone. If I can keep my own head above water till the next vacancy occurs at the Orb I shall be lucky.”
“You’re mad.”