"Look!" she repeated. "I was content once in that shabby, horrid flat. Perfectly content, and patient, and happy. Father said that I was content because I was good, but I know better; it was because I was ignorant; because the thing that was mine was the only thing I knew. He talks of going back! Threatens, because he is afraid, because he never spent money in his life, and is too old to learn now, to return to that squalid, shabby, dirty hole. I want you to talk to him," and she turned him so that he faced her, and as he felt the nervous grasp on his arm he marvelled at her strength. "I want you to tell him what I have already told him, that, if he goes back there, he will go alone. I am out of it now, and there isn't power enough in the world to drag me back." "My dear," remonstrated the Doctor gravely, "you and John are to be married; he is young; surely while he is making his way in the world you will be willing to share whatever his fortune may be. Love is as sweet in poverty, Lola, as it is in a home like this." "That is a platitude, Doctor, a platitude invented by cowards who weren't strong enough to win the good things of life, and who, because they couldn't have them, were fools enough to try to blind themselves with stupid words. I am a woman! A woman's only chance for all the beautiful things of life rests upon some man. When a man comes to me and says, 'I want the only things you have, your youth, your love, your beauty,' haven't I the right to say, 'What will you give me for them?'"