He stopped speaking, but Henry did not speak instead. He did not know what to say; he felt indeed that there was nothing to be said, that he must simply listen. He watched the electric signs on the other side of the river as they spelt out the virtues of Someone's Teas and Another's Whisky, and wondered how long it would be before Gilbert said something else. He was beginning to be bored by the business, and he felt sleepy. He was jealous too, when he thought that Gilbert had kissed Cecily and had been held in her beautiful arms....
"Cecily doesn't mind about the shabbiness of it," he heard Gilbert saying. "We've talked about that, and she says it doesn't matter a bit. All that matters to her is that she shan't be found out ... too publicly anyhow! She called me a prig when I said that I was afraid of tainting my work...."
"Tainting your work?"
"Yes. Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that if I'm mean in one thing I may be mean in another. I'm terribly afraid of doing bad work, Quinny, and I got an idea into my head that if I let taint into my life in one place, I couldn't confine it and it would spread to other places. Do you see? If I let myself get into a rotten position with Cecily, I might write down...."
"I don't see that," said Henry. "Because you love a married woman, it doesn't follow that you'll pot-boil."
"No, perhaps not. But I was afraid of it. I suppose it was priggish of me. That wasn't the only thing, however. I knew that if I did what Cecily wanted me to do, I'd spend most of my time with her or thinking about her. I can't work if I'm doing that, for I think of her and long for her.... Oh, let's go home. It isn't fair to keep you here listening to my twaddle!"
But they did not move. They gazed down on the swiftly-flowing river, and presently they heard Big Ben striking one deep note.
"One o'clock!" said Gilbert.
"What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?" Henry asked at last.
"I'm going away from London. I've chucked my job on the Daily Echo...."