’It’s one of the hardest things I have to bear, that I can’t make your life pleasanter.  Of course you need change; I know it only too well.  You and I ought to have our holiday at this time of the year, like other people.  I fancy I should like to go into the country myself; Clerkenwell isn’t such a beautiful place that one can be content to go there day after day, year after year, without variety.  But we have no money.  Suffer as we may, there’s no help for it—­ because we have no money.  Lives may be wasted—­worse, far worse than wasted—­just because there is no money.  At this moment a whole world of men and women is in pain and sorrow—­because they have no money.  How often have we said that?  The world is made so; everything has to be bought with money.’

‘You find it easier to bear than I do.’

’Yes; I find it easier.  I am stronger-bodied, and at all events I have some variety, whilst you have none.  I know it.  If I could take your share of the burden, how gladly I’d do so!  If I could take your suffering upon myself, you shouldn’t be unhappy for another minute.  But that is another impossible thing.  People who are fortunate in life may ask each day what they can do; we have always to remind ourselves what we can’t.’

’You take a pleasure in repeating such things; it shows how little you feel them.’

‘It shows how I have taken to heart the truth of them.’

She waved her hand impatiently, again sighed, and moved towards the door.

‘Don’t go just yet,’ said Sidney.  ’We have more to say to each other,’

‘I have nothing more to say.  I am miserable, and you can’t help me.’

‘I can, Clara.’

She looked at him with wondering, estranged eyes.  ’How?  What are you going to do?’

’Only speak to you, that’s all.  I have nothing to give but words.  But—­’

She would have left him.  Sidney stepped forward and prevented her.

’No; you must hear what I have got to say.  They may be only words, but if I have no power to move you with my words, then our life has come to utter ruin, and I don’t know what dreadful things lie before us.’

‘I can say the same,’ she replied, in a despairing tone.

’But neither you nor I shall say it!  As long as I have strength to speak, I won’t consent to say that Clara, you must put your hand in mine, and think of your life and mine as one.  If not for my sake, then for your child’s.  Think; do you wish May to suffer for the faults of her parents?’

‘I wish she had never been born!’

’And yet you were the happier for her birth.  It’s only these last six months that you have fallen again into misery.  You indulge it, and it grows worse, harder to resist.  You may say that life seems to grow worse.  Perhaps so.  This affair of Amy’s has been a heavy blow, and we shall miss the little money she brought; goodness knows when another place will be found for her.