Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 7.pdf/409

 It offers you no honest way, only a miserable drudgery. And it keeps you from me. And me too it bribes with the promise of success—if I will desert you You don't know all We may have to wait for years—we may have to wait for ever, if we wait until life is safe. We may be separated We may lose one another altogether Let us fight against it. Why should we separate? Unless True Love is like the other things—an empty cant. This is the only way. We two—who belong to one another."

She looked at him, her face perplexed with this new idea, her heart beating very fast. "We are so young," she said. "And how are we to live? You get a guinea."

"I can get more—I can earn more. I have thought it out. I have been thinking of it these two days. I have been thinking what we could do. I have money."

"You have money?"

"Nearly a hundred pounds."

"But we are so young— And my mother"

"We won't ask her. We will ask no one. This is our affair. Ethel! this is our affair. It is not a question of ways and means—even before this—I have thought Dear one!—don't you love me?"

She did not grasp his emotional quality. She looked at him with puzzled eyes—still practical—making the suggestion arithmetical.

"I could typewrite if I had a machine. I have heard"