“My dear girl, you needn't imagine anything so terrible. You can trust me to keep my word. I shall become a total abstainer; not because alcohol has now or ever can have any fatal attraction for me, but solely because you wish it, Connie. I confess that to-day I came home unusually excited, but it was not because I had exceeded. It was because I had met with an unexpected stroke of good luck. When I met Eden to-day, and was telling him about my new career and my struggles as a beginner, he at once very kindly offered to lend me fifty pounds to assist me.” “And are you going to borrow money from your friend?” “I should not think of asking him for money; but when he offered me this small sum--for to him it _is_ small--I could not think of refusing. It would have been foolish when our funds are so low, and I shall soon be in a position to repay him.” “And you took the money?” “No, I am to have it to-morrow. I am going to meet him at his club.” “I wish, Merton, that you could do without this fifty pounds,” she said after a while. “I see no prospect of repaying it, there is so little coming in. And I seem unable to help you in the least--my last manuscript came back to-day, declined like the others. I am afraid that this borrowing will do us more harm than good. It is the way to lose your friends, I think, and the friendship of a man in Mr. Eden's position should be worth more to you than fifty pounds, even looking at the matter in a purely interested way.” “You need not fear, Connie. Besides, even if you are right in what you say, I should really prefer to have this little help than Eden's friendship. You see he is a mere butterfly, without any interest in things of the mind, and it is not likely that he will be very much to us in our new life, which will be among intellectual and artistic people, I hope.” “With so poor an opinion of him I can't imagine how you can take his money and lay yourself under so great an obligation.” “Pooh, Connie, the obligation will be very light indeed. In three or four months the money will be repaid, and he will think as little about it as he does of inviting me to lunch or giving me a good cigar. I shall always be friendly with him, and invite him sometimes to see us when we are comfortably established; but he is not a man I should ever wish to grapple to my breast with hooks of steel. And so you see, wifie dear, you have been making yourself unhappy without sufficient cause. And now won't you kiss and forgive me, and acknowledge that I am not so black as your imagination painted me?”