“Let me implore you not to do that.  Heaven knows, I hate you having to earn your own living at all, but I’d rather you did it that way than any other.”

“Why, what difference would it make to you, I should like to know?”

“It makes all the difference if I know you’re doing easy work, not slaving yourself to death as some girls do.  It is an easy berth.  And—­and I like the look of those girls I saw you with to-day.  They were nice.  I’d rather think of you working with them than sitting in some horrible office like a man.  Promise me you won’t go looking out for anything else.”

“All right.  I promise.”

“No, but—­on your honour?”

“Honour bright.  There!  Anything for a quiet life.”

They turned on to the street again.  Rickman looked at his watch.  “Look here, we’re both late for dinner—­supposing we go and dine somewhere and do a theatre after, eh?”

“Oh no—­we mustn’t.”  All the same Flossie’s eyes brightened, for she dearly loved the play.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think perhaps you ought to.”

“You mean I can’t afford it?”

“Well—­”

“Oh, I fancy even a journalist’s income will run to that.”

It did run to that and to a hansom afterwards, though Flossie protested, dragging at his arm.

“I’d rather walk,” said she, “indeed I would.”

“Nonsense.  Come, bundle in.”

“Please—­please let me walk.”  He helped her in and closed the apron sharply.  He was annoyed.  That was the second time she had insisted on his poverty.  He thought she had a little too much the air of preparing herself to be a poor man’s wife.  Of course it was pretty of her; but he thought it would have been prettier still if she had let it alone.

Now Flossie had never thought of him as a poor man before to-night; but somehow the idea of the good income he might have had and hadn’t made him appear poor by comparison.  She lay back in the hansom meditating.  “If you could only write a play like that, Keith, what a lot of money you’d make.”

“Shouldn’t I?  But then, you see, I couldn’t write a play like that.”

“Rubbish.  I don’t believe that author—­what d’you call him?—­is so very much cleverer than you.”

“Thanks.”  He bowed ironically.

“Well, I mean it.  And look how they clapped him—­why, they made as much fuss about him as any of the actors.  I say, wouldn’t you like to hear them calling ‘Author!  Author!’?  And then clapping!”

“H’m!”

“Oh, wouldn’t you love it just; you needn’t pretend!  Look there, I declare I’ve split my glove.” (That meant, as Flossie had calculated, a new pair that she should not have to pay for.)

“If you clapped me I would, Flossie.  I should need all the consolation I could get if I’d written as bad a play.”

“Well, if that was a bad play, I’d like to see a good one.”