"Mr Morice!"
"In my small way, I'm well to do. I can afford to buy myself a motor. I can even afford to pay for its repairs; and, in the case of a car like mine, that means something."
"I can believe that, easily."
"Of course you can. But, relatively, compared to you, I'm a pauper, and I don't like it."
"And yet you think that I'll accept gifts from you-- valuable gifts?"
"What I would like is, that a flaw should be found in your uncle's will; or the rightful heir turn up; or something happen which would entail your losing every penny you have in the world."
"What delightful things you say."
"Then, if you were actually and literally a pauper I might feel that you were more on an equality with me.
"Why should you wish to be on an equality with me?"
"Why? Don't you know?" On a sudden she began to tremble so that she could scarcely stand. "I see that you do know. I see it by the way the blood comes and goes in your cheeks; by the light which shines out of your eyes; by the fashion in which, as you see what is in mine, you stand shivering there. You know that I would like to be on an equality with you because I love you; and because it isn't flattering to my pride to know that, in every respect, you are so transcendently above me, and that, compared to you, I am altogether such a thing of clay. I don't want to receive everything and to give nothing. I am one of those sordid animals who like to think that their wives-who-are-to-be will be indebted to them for something besides their bare affection."