There was silence.  Each sat with drooping eyes.

“Do you know,” Warburton then asked, “why I turned grocer?”

“Yes.”

“It was a fortunate idea.  I don’t see how else I should have made enough money, these three years, to pay the income I owed to my mother and sister, and to support myself.  Since my mother’s death—­”

Her look arrested him.

“I am forgetting that you could not have known of that.  She died last autumn; by my father’s will, our old house, at St. Neots then became mine; it’s let; the rent goes to my sister, and out of the shop profits I easily make up what her own part of the lost capital used to yield.  Jane is going in for horticulture, making a business of what was always her chief pleasure, and before long she may be independent; but it would be shabby to get rid of my responsibilities at her expense—­don’t you think so?”

“Worse than shabby.”

“Good.  I like to hear you speak so decidedly.  Now, if you please”—­ his own voice was not quite steady—­“tell me in the same tone whether you agree with Applegarth—­whether you think I should do better to stick to the shop and not worry with looking for a more respectable employment.”

Bertha seemed to reflect for a moment, smiling soberly.

“It depends entirely on how you feel about it.”

“Not entirely,” said Warburton, his features nervously rigid; “but first let me tell you how I do feel about it.  You know I began shopkeeping as if I were ashamed of myself.  I kept it a dead secret; hid away from everybody; told elaborate lies to my people; and the result was what might have been expected—­before long I sank into a vile hypochrondria, saw everything black or dirty grey, thought life intolerable.  When common sense found out what was the matter with me, I resolved to have done with snobbery and lying; but a sanguine friend of mine, the only one in my confidence, made me believe that something was going to happen—­in fact, the recovery of the lost thousands; and I foolishly held on for a time.  Since the awful truth has been divulged, I have felt a different man.  I can’t say that I glory in grocerdom? but the plain fact is that I see nothing degrading in it, and I do my day’s work as a matter of course.  Is it any worse to stand behind a counter than to sit in a counting-house?  Why should retail trade be vulgar, and wholesale quite repeatable?  This is what I’ve come to, as far as my own thought and feeling go.”

“Then,” said Bertha, after a moment’s pause, “why trouble yourself any more?”

“Because—­”

His throat turned so dry that he had to stop with a gasp.  His fingers were doing their best to destroy the tassels on the arm of his easy chair.  With, an effort, he jerked out the next words.

“One may be content to be a grocer; but what about one’s wife?”

With head bent, so that her smile was half concealed, Bertha answered softly—­