“If I’ve seen anything, God knows I couldn’t have seen it but for you, and I know that I couldn’t have said it except to you. You seemed to make everything clear for a minute; but I don’t practice what I preach. You would help me.... There are only us two in the world for all purposes, and—and you like to have me with you?”
“Of course I do. I wonder if you can realise how utterly lonely I am!”
“Darling, I think I can.”
“Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up and down the back-garden trying to cry. I never can cry. Can you?”
“It’s some time since I tried. What was the trouble? Overwork?”
“I don’t know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had no money, and was starving in London. I thought about it all day, and it frightened me—oh, how it frightened me!”
“I know that fear. It’s the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the night sometimes. You oughtn’t to know anything about it.”
“How do you know?”
“Never mind. Is your three hundred a year safe?”
“It’s in Consols.”