“I have not the slightest doubt that you could make your living in that way,” he said; “for how many do it who are not nearly so gifted as you are! But, Connie, if I understand you rightly, you wish to begin making money at once, and that is scarcely possible, as you have not been doggedly working away for years to make yourself known and useful to editors and publishers.”
He then went very fully into this question, and concluded with a comical description of the magazine editor as a very unhappy spider, against whose huge geometric web there beats a continuous rain of dipterous insects of every known variety, besides innumerable nondescripts. The poor spider, unable to eat and digest more than about half a dozen to a dozen flies every month, was forced to spend his whole time cutting and dropping his useless captures from the web. As a rule Merton did not talk in this strain: the editors had cut away too many of his own nondescript dipterous contributions to their webs for him to love them; but for some mysterious reason it suited him just now to take the side of the enemy in the old quarrel of author versus editor.
“Do you think then that I have made a mistake in coming to London?” she asked despondingly.
He smiled and drew her closer to him. “Connie, dear, I am exceedingly glad you did come, for there is no going back, you say; and now that you are here there is only one thing to do to smooth the path for us, and that is—to consent to marry me at once.”
This did not accord with her wishes at all. To consent would be to confess herself beaten, and that dream of coming to London and keeping herself, for a time at all events, by means of her own work, had been so long and so fondly cherished, and she wished so much to be allowed to make the trial. But he pleaded so eloquently that in the end he overcame her reluctance.
“I will promise to do what you wish,” she said, “if after you have thought it over for a few days you should still continue in the same mind. But, Merton, I hope you will not think me too careful and anxious if I ask you whether it does not seem imprudent, when you have just given up your salary and are only beginning to work at something different, to marry a penniless girl? You have told me that you have no money, and that you cannot look to your relations for any assistance.”
“By no money I simply meant no fortune. Of course we could not get married without funds, and just now I have a couple of hundreds standing to my credit in the bank. If we are careful, and content to begin married life in apartments, we need not spend any more than I am spending now by myself.”
He omitted to say that this money was all that was left of a legacy of £500 which had come to him from an aunt, and that he had been spending it pretty freely. His words only gave the impression that he knew the value of money, and was not one to act without careful consideration.
They were still discussing this point when Fan came in, and after shaking hands with their visitor sat down in her hat and jacket. Merton, after expressing his regret that she had lost her protectress, proceeded to make some remarks about Miss Starbrow's eccentric temper. Nothing which that lady did, he said, surprised him in the least. Fan sat with eyes cast down; she looked pale and fatigued, and her face clouded at his words; then murmuring some excuse, she rose and went to her bedroom.
“I must warn you, Merton,” said Constance, “that Fan can't endure to hear anything said in dispraise of Miss Starbrow. I have discovered that it is the one subject about which she is capable of losing her temper and quarrelling with her best friend.”