“I love the roof,” said Marcella, patiently mopping.  It was three o’clock:  the shrill hum of mosquitoes made them afraid to put out the light, since they had no mosquito nets.  After a while they stood by the window watching the water running along the street as high as the kerb stones.

“I love the roof, too.  A few months ago I’d have fainted at the thought of doing anything so unconventional as sleeping on a roof.  You are changing me, Marcella.  I’m getting your ideas of not caring what people think, of being my own censor.  And—­do you know something else, Marcella?” he added, looking at her with adoration.  Her eyes asked questions.

“I believe I’ve got it beat at last.”

“The whisky?”

“Yes.  I don’t want the bally stuff now.  I want you instead.  I hate you away from me for an instant.  If you went away now, dearie, I’d be raving with d.t. next day!”

“Oh Louis!”

“I would!  I worship you, Marcella.  You’re life itself to me.  I can’t get on two minutes without you.”

“But just supposing I did die—­seriously, Louis!  People get knocked down in streets and all that.  Why shouldn’t it be me?”

“I shouldn’t attempt to live.  I know exactly what I’d do.  I’ve got it all worked out!  I shall just get blind, roaring drunk and then throw myself in the harbour.  My life is useless without you.”

To his amazement she wrung her hands hopelessly, and looked at him with tragic eyes.

“Can’t you see, you utter idiot, that that’s just all wrong?  It’s no use doing things for someone else!  You’ve got to do them for yourself!  What’s the good of it?  Do you think I want to make you a flabby thing hanging on to my apron strings all the time?  You’ve got drunk on whisky in the past.  Louis, I’m simply not going to have you getting drunk on me!  What on earth’s the use of conquering drink hunger and getting woman-hunger?  It’s only another—­what you call neurosis, and what I call kink!  If that’s all the use my love and the whole wicked struggle is going to be, I might as well give up at once?”

He caught her wet face between his hands.  In the light of the candle he looked at her earnestly.

“If, at the end of all this, I’ve to go on being a prop to you, we need not go on trying any more.  Props are rotten and cowardly, whether they are props of love or not.  I want to see you grow so that, if I go out of life, you’ll stand up straight with your head in the sun and the wind.  Not propped, my dear!  Father was all wrong, I think now.  When he’d killed the whisky he leaned on a great big man God outside him, a shield and defence.  Can’t you see that we’ve to stand up alone without God or anything except ourselves?  Can’t you see that unless our strength is in ourselves we’ll never stand?  That’s what I’m trying to do—­and I know how hard it is.”

“You?  You’re not a drunkard, Marcella,” he said.

She smiled a little as she looked at him.