Part 68

"Not altogether. If I couldn't get you I'd try to get him."

"Would you? How do you know that you're going to get me?"

He smiled. "I don't. I only know that I'm prepared, if I may say so, to pay for you."

"Oh," she said, "it isn't that."

He smiled again at her horror.

"I know it isn't that. Still----" He named a round sum, a sum so perfect in its roundness that it took her breath away. With such a sum she could do all that she wanted for her sister Effy at once, and secure herself against gross poverty for years.

"It's more than we could give Mr. Tanqueray."

"Is it?"

"Much more."

"That's what's so awful," she said.

He noticed how she clenched her hands as she said it.

"It's not my fault, is it?"

"Oh--I don't care whose fault it is!"

"But you care?"

"Yes." She almost whispered it.

He was struck by that sudden drop from vehemence to pathos.

"He is a very great friend of yours?"

"Yes."

"And--he's just married, isn't he?"

"Yes. And he isn't very well off. I don't think he could afford----" she said.

He coloured painfully as if she had suspected him of a desire to traffic in Tanqueray's poverty.

"We should pay him very well," he said.

"His book" (she pressed it on him), "is not arranged for."

"And yours is?"

"Practically it is. The contract's drawn up, but the date's not settled."

"If the date's not settled, surely I've still a chance?"

"And he," she said, "has still a chance if--I fail you?"

"Of course--if you fail me."