“I shan’t ask her,” said Peter.  “Don’t, please, Hilary,” he added miserably.  “Can’t you see....”

“See what?  I see that we get a little more destitute every day:  that the boarders are melting away; that I am reduced to unthinkably sordid hackwork, and you to the grind of uncongenial toil; that Peggy can’t afford to keep a cook who can boil a potato respectably (they were like walnuts to-day) that she and the children go about with their clothes dropping off them.  I see that; and I see these Urquharts, closely connected with our family, rolling in unearned riches, spending and squandering and wasting and never giving away.  I see the Robinsons, our own relations, fattening on the money that ought to have come to us, and now and then throwing us a loan as you throw a dog a bone.  I see your friend Leslie taking himself off to the antipodes to spend his millions, that he may be out of the reach of disturbing appeals.  I see a world constituted so that you would think the devils in hell must cry shame on it.”  His cough, made worse by the fog, choked his relation of his vision.

Peter had nothing to say to it:  he could only sigh over it.  The Haves and the Have-Nots—­there they are, and there is no getting round the ugly fact.

“Denis,” said Peter, “would lend me money if I asked him.  You heard him offer.  But I am not going to ask him.  We are none of us going to ask him.  If I find that you have, and that he has given it you, I shall pay it straight back....  You know, Hilary, we’re really not so badly off as all that; we get along pretty well, I think; better than most other people.”  The other Have-Nots; they made no difference, in Hilary’s eyes, to the fact that of course the Margerisons should have been among the Haves.

Hilary said, “You are absolutely impervious, Peter, to other people’s troubles,” and turned up his coat-collar and sank down on a seat in the waiting-room. (Of course, they had missed the 10.5, the last good train, and were now waiting for the 11.2, the slow one.)

Peter walked up and down the platform, feeling very cold.  He had come away, in his excitement, without his overcoat.  The chill of the foggy night seemed to sink deep into his innermost being.

Hilary’s words rang in his ears.  “I see that we get a little more destitute every day.”  It was true.  Every day the Margerisons seemed to lose something more.  To-night Peter had lost something he could ill afford to part with—­another degree of Denis Urquhart’s regard.  That seemed to be falling from him bit by bit; perhaps that was why he felt so cold.  However desperately he clung to the remnants, as he had clung since that last interview in Venice, he could not think to keep them much longer at this rate.

As he walked up and down the platform, his cold hands thrust deep into his pockets, he was contemplating another loss—­one that would hurt absurdly much.

If Hilary felt that he needed more money so badly, he must have it.  There were certain things Peter declined to do.  He wouldn’t borrow from the Urquharts; but he would sell his last treasured possession to soothe Hilary for a little while.  The Berovieri goblet had been bought for a lot of money, and could at any moment be sold for a lot of money.  The Berovieri goblet must go.