They were walking on the Embankment one day, and she, for such a correct little person, was mad with mirth, when he broke out.  “Flossie, you little lunatic!  You might be going to marry a stock-broker instead of a journalist.”

“I’m going to marry a very rich man—­for me.”

“For you, darling?  A devilish poor one, I’m afraid.”

“Oh don’t!  We’ve said enough about that.”

“Yes, but I haven’t told you everything.  Do you know, I might have been fairly well off by now, if I’d only chosen.”

Now there was no need whatever for him to make that revelation.  He was driven to it by vanity.  He wanted to make an impression.  He wanted Flossie to see him in all his moral beauty.

“How was that?” she asked with interest.

“I can’t tell you much about it.  It was something to do with business.  I got an offer of a thumping big partnership three years ago—­and I refused it.”

He had made an impression.  Flossie turned on him a look of wonder, a look uncertain and inscrutable.  “What did you do that for?”

“I did it because it was right.  I didn’t like the business.”

“That’s not quite the same thing, is it?”

“Not always.  It happened to be in this case.”

“Why, what sort of business was it?”

“It wasn’t scavenging, and it wasn’t burglary—­exactly.  It was—­” he hesitated—­“only the second-hand book-trade.”

“I know—­they make a lot of money that way.”

“They make too much for my taste sometimes.  Besides—­”

“Besides what?” They had turned into an embrasure of the parapet to discuss this question.  They stood close together looking over the river.

“It isn’t my trade.  I’m only a blooming journalist.”

“You don’t make so very much out of that, do you?  Is that the reason why we have to wait?”

“I’m afraid so.  But I hope I shall be something more than a journalist some day.”

“You like writing, don’t you?”

“Yes, Flossie; I shouldn’t be much good at it, if I didn’t.”

“I see.”  She was looking eastwards away from him, and her expression had changed; but it was still inscrutable.  And yet by the turning of her head, he saw her mind moving towards a conclusion; but it was impossible to say whether she reached it by the slow process of induction, or by woman’s rapid intuition.  Anyhow she had reached it.  Presently she spoke again.  “Could you still get that thing, that partnership any time—­if you tried?”

“Any time.  But I’m not going to try.”

She turned round abruptly with an air of almost fierce determination.  “Well, if I get an offer of a good place, I shan’t refuse it.  I shall leave the Bank.”  She spoke as if so desperate a step would be followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution.

He was surprised to find how uneasy this threat always made him.  The proverbial safety of the Bank had impressed him in more ways than one.  And Flossie’s post there had other obvious advantages.  It brought her into contact with women of a better class than her own, with small refinements, and conventions which were not conspicuous at Mrs. Downey’s.