Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/291

 She would have left him. Sidney stepped forward and prevented her.

“No; you must hear what I have got to say. They may be only words, but if I have no power to move you with my words, then our life has come to utter ruin, and I don’t know what dreadful things lie before us.”

“I can say the same,” she replied, in a despairing tone.

“But neither you nor I shall say it! As long as I have strength to speak, I won’t consent to say that! Clara, you must put your hand in mine, and think of your life and mine as one. If not for my sake, then for your child’s. Think; do you wish May to suffer for the faults of her parents?”

“I wish she had never been born!”

“And yet you were the happier for her birth. It’s only these last six months that you have fallen again into misery. You indulge it, and it grows worse, harder to resist. You may say that life seems to grow worse. Perhaps so. This affair of Amy’s has been a heavy blow, and we shall miss the little money she brought; goodness knows when another place will be found for her. But all the more