“They all laugh at you, you know. They say you’re spoony on me.”
“Much you care,” he muttered.
“Now then, quarrelsome.”
At the station he took a ticket and said he was going to accompany her home.
“You don’t seem to have much to do with your time,” she said.
“I suppose I can waste it in my own way.”
They seemed to be always on the verge of a quarrel. The fact was that he hated himself for loving her. She seemed to be constantly humiliating him, and for each snub that he endured he owed her a grudge. But she was in a friendly mood that evening, and talkative: she told him that her parents were dead; she gave him to understand that she did not have to earn her living, but worked for amusement.
“My aunt doesn’t like my going to business. I can have the best of everything at home. I don’t want you to think I work because I need to.” Philip knew that she was not speaking the truth. The gentility of her class made her use this pretence to avoid the stigma attached to earning her living.
“My family’s very well-connected,” she said.
Philip smiled faintly, and she noticed it.