For a whole fortnight he drank steadily, using remarkable cleverness in getting money.  He joined forces with Mr. King:  for the first week they obtained money from some unknown source and only came home at night when they were put out of the hotels at closing time, and even then they brought whisky or gin—­which was much cheaper—­home with them.  Marcella had not known there were distinctions in alcohol; she found during that fortnight that whisky made him mad and then terrified, gin made him horribly disgusting and beer made him simply silly and very sick.  The second week Louis tricked and lied to Marcella, using any excuse to get her out of the room.  At the end of three days he had sold everything he possessed except his least reputable suit, which he had to keep to wear.  The last day of the fortnight he came home without the waistcoat:  whether he had sold that, or given it away in maudlin generosity, or lost it in some fantastic fashion she could never gather.  He had not taken any of her money.  On Mrs. King’s advice she had gone up on the roof one day, crept along three other roofs and hidden it in a gully.

“You’ve got to be up to all the dodges,” said Mrs. King.

“I loathe dodges,” said Marcella.

She got down to the depths in this fortnight.  Louis scarcely slept at all, nor did she.  Soothing him at night sickened her beyond endurance; she read the New Testament much during the day while he was away, and the story of the Grail.  One day St. Paul said something to her that brought her up sharp.

“Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing; love suffereth long, and is kind:  love—­beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

“I don’t believe I love him.  I don’t believe I ever loved him.  That madness wasn’t love, or it would have endured all things,” she said.  Then Parsifal told her that without love pity might still endure all things.  By the time she had been married two months her pity for him was an overwhelming ache.  He pretended penitence to win it:  he had no need to pretend....

At last he had no money.  Everything portable he had sold, including some of her clothes.  His drink hunger was tearing him.  She was going about the room with big, mournful eyes and white face, making a meal for him.  He had scarcely eaten for the whole fortnight; she did not understand that he was too poisoned to eat; she tried to persuade him to take food until he was irritated beyond endurance and threw it on the floor.  As she passed him, quiet footed, he noticed her purse in the pocket of the big cooking apron Mrs. King had lent her.

“Dearie,” he said presently, “leave that silly mess and come here to me.”

She came immediately, and sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders drooping.

“Your little Louis’s so sorry,” he whispered.

“Are you really sorry, Louis?  Not like you were last time?” she asked, suddenly hoping all things again on the slightest provocation.