He is a good-looking fellow, very.  The high white collar that shows up in the dusk is fastened round a long, well-set neck; the figure in the blue serge suit is straight and pleasing, and the shoulders erect and slim.

The girl’s eyes, looking out of the shadow, take in these points, and the pleasure they give her seems inextricably confused with dull pain.  Her gaze passes on to his face, and rests eagerly, almost thirstily, upon it.

There is light enough still to show her its well-cut oval, spoiled now by the haggard falling in of the cheeks, the lines in the forehead, and the swellings beneath the eyes.

He shifts his position a little and glances through the window.  His eyes are full of irritation, and the girl knows it, though they are turned from her.  She gives a suppressed, inaudible sigh; his attitude now brings out the impatient discontent on his mouth and the rigid determination of the chin.

“I suppose you mean two people can live upon nothing?” His voice is cold, even hostile, and he speaks apparently to the panes, but the tones are well-bred and pleasing; and again the girl wonders dimly which is the predominating sensation in her—­pleasure or pain.

“No,” she says, in rather a suffocated voice.  “But I say, if either person has enough, or the two together, it does not matter which has it, or which has the most.”

Silence, which her hesitating, timid voice breaks at last.

“Does it?”

“Yes, I think it does,” he answered shortly.  “The man must have enough to support both, or he has no right to marry at all.”

The girl’s hands lock themselves together convulsively, unseen behind her slight waist, laced so skilfully into the fashionable bodice.

There is a hard decision in the incisive tones that does not belong to the mere expression of a general theory—­a cold authority and a weight of personal conviction that turns the words into a statement of rigid principle.

The girl feels almost dizzy, and she closes her hot eyelids suddenly to shut out the line of that hard, obstinate chin.

“People’s ideas on what is enough to support both vary so much,” she says quietly, with well-bred indifference in her tone, while her heart beats wildly as she waits for his next remark.

“Well, what would you consider enough yourself?” he says coldly, after a slight pause, turning a little more towards her.

The red light glows steadily on her skirts, and he can see the graceful outline of her knees under them, and one small foot upon the hearthrug; the rest of the form is veiled in the shadow, except one rounded line of a shoulder and the glint of light hair above.

He looks down at her, and there seems a sudden, nervous expansion in his frame; outwardly there is not the faintest impatient movement.  He waits quietly for her reply.

The girl hesitates as she looks at him.  To her, in her absorbing love for the man before her, the question is an absurd mockery.