"I tell you that I do not wish to hear anything about that man. If he is in poverty and wickedness, he deserves it."
"Wouldn't you help him now?"
"I tell you I have no money."
"But this man is your husband."
"I tell you again, I do not want to know anything about the man."
"Well, I can go and tell him that you're here, rolling in gold. Forty pounds I want, and then I'll become a credit to the family—as a tobacconist. Else you shall have your husband back again. I've only to set him on to you."
"I don't want your secret."
"Not to keep your husband from finding you out? Have you no heart, Alice?"
Molly pointed to the door. "Out!" she ordered. "Out, this instant!"
He turned away reluctantly. "I thought better of you, Alice. Well, it's a wicked world. Go straight, and you go downhill. Chuck your respectability, and you're like the sparks that fly upward. When I came here the other day, I thought I was coming to see a respectable woman."