“I shall have to leave here at the end of the week,” she said suddenly. “It’s impossible to go on living here, and letting you pay my rent and my food bill. I owe you more than I can ever repay already.”
“If you talk like that I’ll––I’ll kill you!” said June in a rage. “You don’t understand what friendship means. 271 Micky had tried to teach you, and so have I, and all you do is to throw it back in our faces.... O Esther, don’t!...”
Esther had turned away and covered her face with her hands.
“I know you think I’m ungrateful and horrid,” she said brokenly. “But how would you like to be in my position? I haven’t a shilling of my own in the world––the things I’ve been wearing since I came here are paid for by ... by ... oh, you know! I hate to look at that fur coat and my new frock. You talk to me about being proud and obstinate; well, I can’t help it, you must go on thinking it, that’s all; I’d rather die than take anything more from any one. I kept myself before, and I will again....”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you––I’m a perfect beast,” June declared in remorse. “But it does seem such a shame.”
Esther raised a flushed face.
“We can’t all have money and be independent,” she said hardily. “But I think you might try and understand how I feel about it.”
“I only know that I’m dying to help you, and you won’t let me,” June said grumpily. “Lord! where is my cigarette case? I shall swear or do something worse if I can’t smoke.”
She went out of the room, and Esther heard her go clattering up the stairs. There were tears in her eyes now, but she brushed them angrily away; after all, what was there to cry for! It was only that she had got to go back to where she had left off that New Year’s Eve when she first met Micky; everything was just as it had been then, save that she was the poorer now by the loss of a dream.