"Aren't you happy with us?" asked Leonard.
"Hardly—or I shouldn't be going."
He spoke with all the exaggerated brutality of the man who sees himself obliged to hurt those he loves.
"It's not your fault," he continued in a gentler voice, "it's mine. I'm such a waster. I'm a miserable, restless rotter, bound to make myself and every one else unhappy. Now if I go to London, I shall work—I shall have something to live for."
"Fame, you mean," sobbed Janey.
"Well, something of that kind."
He had finished shaving, and came and sat down by her on the bed, forcing her drowned eyes to look into his.
"Janey, don't you want me to be famous? Wouldn't you like to be the sister of a well-known violinist instead of Convict Seventy-six? Wouldn't you like to see me fill the Albert Hall?"
"Fill hell!" shouted Leonard. "D'you really believe all the rot that old bounder spoke?"
"Well, it isn't likely he'd teach me for nothing if he didn't expect to make something out of me."