Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/240

232 know it—you know it perfectly. All, and more than all that I can tell you, you know."

He drew her closer, kissed her again, held her there as he would have held a child in a paroxysm, soothing her silently till it should pass away. Her emotion had brought the tears to her eyes; she dried them as she disengaged herself. The next moment, however, she resumed, attacking him again:

"For a public man she would be the ideal companion. She's made for public life; she's made to shine, to be concerned in great things, to occupy a high position and to help him on. She would help you in everything as she has helped you in this. Together there is nothing you couldn't do. You can have the first house in England—yes, the first! What freedom is there in being poor? How can you do anything without money, and what money can you make for yourself—what money will ever come to you? That's the crime—to throw away such an instrument of power, such a blessed instrument of good."

"It isn't everything to be rich, mother," said Nick, looking at the floor in a certain patient way, with a provisional docility and his hands in his pockets. "And it isn't so fearful to be poor."

"It's vile—it's abject. Don't I know?"

"Are you in such acute want?" Nick asked, smiling.

"Ah, don't make me explain what you have only to look at to see!" his mother returned, as if with a richness of allusion to dark Clements in her fate.

"Besides," Nick went on, "there's other money in the world than Julia's. I might come by some of that."