"I cannot thank you sufficiently," he says, in a low tone. "Your offer is more than kind: it is generous. But I cannot accept it. It is impossible I should receive anything at your hands." "Why?" she says, her lips white, her eyes large and earnest. "Does that question require an answer?" asks Dorian, slowly. "There was a time, even in our short married life, when I believed in your friendship for me, and then I would have taken anything from you,--from my wife; but now, I tell you again, it is impossible. You yourself have put it out of my power." He turns from her coldly, and concentrates his gaze once more upon the twilit garden. "Don't speak to me like that,--at least now," says Georgie, her breath coming in short quick gasps. "It hurts me so! Take this wretched money, if--if you still have any love for me." He turns deliberately away from the small pleading face. "And leave you penniless," he says. "No, not that. Some day you can pay me back, if you wish it. All these months you have given me every thing I could possibly desire, let me now make you some small return." Unfortunately, this speech angers him deeply. "We are wasting time," he says, quickly. "Understand, once for all, I will receive nothing from you." "James," says Mrs. Branscombe, impulsively, going up to Scrope and taking his hand. She is white and nervous, and, in her agitation, is hardly aware that, for the first time, she has called him by his Christian name. "Persuade him. Tell him he should accept this money. Dear James, speak for me: _I_ am nothing to him." For the second time Branscombe turns and looks at her long and earnestly. "I must say I think your wife quite right," says Scrope, energetically. "She wants you to take this money; your not taking it distresses her very much, and you have no right in the world to marry a woman and then make her unhappy." This is faintly quixotic, considering all the circumstances, but nobody says anything. "You ought to save Sartoris from the hammer no matter at what price,--pride or anything else. It isn't a fair thing, you know, Branscombe, to lift the roof from off her head for a silly prejudice." When he has finished this speech, Sir James feels that he has been unpardonably impertinent. "She will have a home with my uncle," says Branscombe, unmoved,--"a far happier and more congenial home than this has ever been." A faint sneer disfigures his handsome mouth for a moment. Then his mood changes, and he turns almost fiercely upon Georgie. "Why will you fight against your own good fortune?" he says. "See how it is favoring you. You will get rid of me for years, perhaps--I hope--forever, and you will be comfortable with him."