George lapsed into savage meditation.  During all the seven years of his married life he had somehow supposed himself to be superior, as a man, to his struggling rivals.  He had regarded them with easy toleration, as from a height.  And now he saw himself tumbling down among them, humiliated.  Everything seemed unreal to him then.  The studio and the breakfast-room were solid; the waving trees in Regent’s Park were solid; the rich knick-knacks and beautiful furniture and excellent food and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most disconcertingly unreal.  One letter from old Samuel had made them tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions.  Even George’s reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly fallacious.  What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel.  Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick.  It was, in a way, worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that case he could at any rate have gone majestically to Samuel and said:  “Your niece and her child are starving.”  But with a minimum of three hundred a year for their support three people cannot possibly starve.

“Ring the bell and have this kid taken out,” said he.

Whereupon Georgie yelled.

Kate came, a starched white-and-blue young thing of sixteen.

“Kate,” said George, autocratically, “take baby.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kate, with respectful obedience.  The girl had no notion that she was not real to her master, or that her master was saying to himself:  “I ought not to be ordering human beings about like this.  I can’t pay their wages.  I ought to be starving in a garret.”

When George and Mary were alone, George said:  “Look here!  Does he mean it?”

“You may depend he means it.  It’s so like him.  Me asking for that L200 must have upset him.  And then seeing that about Heidsieck in the paper—­he’d make up his mind all of a sudden—­I know him so well.”

“H’m!” snorted George.  “I shall make my mind up all of a sudden, too!”

“What shall you do?”

“There’s one thing I shan’t do,” said George.

“And that is, stop here.  Do you realize, my girl, that we shall be absolutely up a gum-tree?”

“I should have thought you would be able—­”

“Absolute gum-tree!” George interrupted her.  “Simply can’t keep the shop open!  To-morrow, my child, we go down to Bursley.”

“Who?”

“You, me, and the infant.”

“And what about the servants?”

“Send ’em home.”

“But we can’t descend on uncle like that without notice, and him full of his election!  Besides, he’s cross.”

“We shan’t descend on him.”

“Then where shall you go?”

“We shall put up at the Tiger,” said George, impressively.

“The Tiger?” gasped Mary.

George had meant to stagger, and he had staggered.