“Well, we can’t get any now, at all events,” he said. “I don’t suppose Trent will be such a cad as to stop my allowance, but the next cheque won’t be due till Christmas, and we can’t very well borrow any more. What about Carter’s?” Carter’s was the establishment from which they were accustomed to get their household supplies, one of those huge bazaars which deal in everything from a landed estate to a packet of pins. “I paid them a hundred pounds the other day,” Molly answered. “I expect they’ll give us credit for a time.” Alistair said nothing, but sat tapping the table with his fork, and thinking. “I must sell some of my jewels, I suppose,” said Molly bravely, after a short silence. Alistair looked up and studied her face. “Why not sell the furniture and everything, and let’s clear out of this place? We can’t go on like this much longer, any way. What should you say to disappearing for a time?” “Where to?” asked Molly, startled. “Somewhere over on the south side. I thought of Lambeth. If we’re going to be poor, it’s best to live where everybody else is poor around us.” Molly stared at him in consternation. In her ears the proposal, if it were serious, sounded like the end of everything. Molly had been born and bred in Lambeth. She knew what life there was. The idea of returning to it, after her experience of luxury, struck her as a dismal form of suicide. And not being able to divine the curious, half-romantic attraction which the scheme had come to possess for Alistair, she credited him with her own feeling of repulsion. The suspicion quickly followed that this suggestion covered a design to give her up. Stuart meant to demonstrate that it was impossible for them to live together any longer, and on that pretext to accept the offers of his family to rescue him. The spectre of parting, never really laid, always peeping out at odd moments to grin at her, now showed its haunting features plainly, and she cried out with passion: “No, no! Don’t talk like that! Don’t talk like that, Alistair!” Alistair shrugged his shoulders as he rose from the table. He had not expected his proposition to be very eagerly welcomed at first, and he was content to let the idea rest in her mind. “Well, I’ve got to go into the City this morning,” he said. Molly glanced at him inquiringly, but thought it wiser not to ask whom he was going to see. He took a third-class ticket on the Underground Railway, in accordance with his resolution to experiment with poverty. But he had donned a frock-coat from Savile Row in order to give his mission a serious character, and he noticed that this incongruous dress seemed to be a cause of offence to his fellow-passengers. Two workmen with a roll of leaden piping, whom he found in his compartment, stared at him with resentful scorn, and made remarks to one another in an undertone which he could see were disparaging.