'But, I mean . . . you said you wanted to make a lot of money and . . .'
'Yes, I'm not badly off, but I can't go on, Betty. I shall never do any good like this.'
Betty was silent for some minutes. Her ingrained modesty made any discussion of her friend's profession intolerable. Vanquished in argument, grudgingly accepting the logic of Victoria's actions, she could not free her mind from the thought that these actions were repulsive, that there must have been some other way.
'Oh? You want to get out of it all . . . you know . . . I have never said you weren't quite right, but . . .'
'But I'm quite wrong?'
'No . . . I don't mean that . . . I don't like to say that . . . I'm not clever like you, Vic, but . . .'
'We've done with all that,' said Victoria coldly. 'I do want to get out of it because it's getting me no nearer to what I want. I don't quite know how to do it. I'm not very well, you know.'
Betty looked up quickly with concern in her face.
'Have those veins been troubling you again?'
'Yes, a little. I can't risk much more.'