“Anyway, in a year you will be worth less,” I continued malignantly. “You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year later—to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to a basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it would be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ... and caught a chill, or something or other. It’s not easy to get over an illness in your way of life. If you catch anything you may not get rid of it. And so you would die.” “Oh, well, then I shall die,” she answered, quite vindictively, and she made a quick movement. “But one is sorry.” “Sorry for whom?” “Sorry for life.” Silence. “Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?” “What’s that to you?” “Oh, I am not cross-examining you. It’s nothing to me. Why are you so cross? Of course you may have had your own troubles. What is it to me? It’s simply that I felt sorry.” “Sorry for whom?” “Sorry for you.” “No need,” she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint movement. That incensed me at once. What! I was so gentle with her, and she.... “Why, do you think that you are on the right path?” “I don’t think anything.” “That’s what’s wrong, that you don’t think. Realise it while there is still time. There still is time. You are still young, good-looking; you might love, be married, be happy....” “Not all married women are happy,” she snapped out in the rude abrupt tone she had used at first. “Not all, of course, but anyway it is much better than the life here. Infinitely better. Besides, with love one can live even without happiness. Even in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one lives. But here what is there but ... foulness? Phew!” I turned away with disgust; I was no longer reasoning coldly. I began to feel myself what I was saying and warmed to the subject. I was already longing to expound the cherished ideas I had brooded over in my corner. Something suddenly flared up in me. An object had appeared before me.