“Well,” said Michael, at last, “I suppose you’ve come about that little advance to your wife. It’s quite all right; no hurry whatever.”

While saying this he had become conscious that the ‘little snipe’ was dreadfully disturbed. His eyes had a most peculiar look, those large, shrimp-like eyes which seemed, as it were, in advance of the rest of him. He hastened on:

“I believe in Australia myself. I think you’re perfectly right, Bicket, and the sooner you go, the better. She doesn’t look too strong.”

Bicket swallowed.

“Sir,” he said, “you’ve been a gent to me, and it’s hard to say things.”

“Then don’t.”

Bicket’s cheeks became suffused with blood: queer effect in that pale, haggard face.

“It isn’t what you think,” he said: “I’ve come to ask you to tell me the truth.” Suddenly he whipped from his pocket what Michael perceived to be a crumpled novel-wrapper.

“I took this from a book on the counter as I came by, downstairs. There! Is that my wife?” He stretched it out.

Michael beheld with consternation the wrapper of Storbert’s novel. One thing to tell the lie benevolent already determined on—quite another to deny this!

Bicket gave him little time.

“I see it is, from your fyce,” he said. “What’s it all mean? I want the truth—I must ‘ave it! I’m gettin’ wild over all this. If that’s ‘er fyce there, then that’s ‘er body in the Gallery—Aubrey Greene; it’s the syme nyme. What’s it all mean?” His face had become almost formidable; his cockney accent very broad. “What gyme ‘as she been plyin’? You gotta tell me before I go aht of ’ere.”

Michael’s heels came together. He said quietly.

“Steady, Bicket.”

“Steady! You’d be steady if YOUR wife—! All that money! YOU never advanced it—you never give it ‘er—never! Don’t tell me you did!”

Michael had taken his line. No lies!

“I lent her ten pounds to make a round sum of it—that’s all; the rest she earned—honourably; and you ought to be proud of her.”

Bicket’s mouth fell open.

“Proud? And how’s she earned it? Proud! My Gawd!”

Michael said coldly:

“As a model. I myself gave her the introduction to my friend, Mr. Greene, the day you had lunch with me. You’ve heard of models, I suppose?”

Bicket’s hands tore the wrapper, and the pieces fell to the floor. “Models!” he said: “Pynters—yes, I’ve ‘eard of ’em—Swines!”

“No more swine than you are, Bicket. Be kind enough not to insult my friend. Pull yourself together, man, and take a cigarette.”

Bicket dashed the proffered case aside.

“I—I—was stuck on her,” he said passionately, “and she’s put this up on me!” A sort of sob came out of his lungs.

“You were stuck on her,” said Michael; his voice had sting in it. “And when she does her best for you, you turn her down—is that it? Do you suppose she liked it?”

Bicket covered his face suddenly.

“What should I know?” he muttered from behind his hands.

A wave of pity flooded up in Michael. Pity! Blurb!

He said drily: “When you’ve quite done, Bicket. D’you happen to remember what YOU did for HER?”

Bicket uncovered his face and stared wildly.

“You’ve never told her that?”

“No; but I jolly well will if you don’t pull yourself together.”

“What do I care if you do, now—lyin’ like that, for all the men in the world! Sixty pound! Honourably! D’you think I believe that?” His voice had desolation in it.

“Ah!” said Michael. “You don’t believe simply because you’re ignorant, as ignorant as the swine you talk of. A girl can do what she did and be perfectly honest, as I haven’t the faintest doubt she is. You’ve only to look at her, and hear the way she speaks of it. She did it because she couldn’t bear to see you selling those balloons. She did it to get you out of the gutter, and give you both a chance. And now you’ve got the chance, you kick up like this. Dash it all, Bicket, be a sport! Suppose I tell her what you did for her—d’you think she’s going to squirm and squeal? Not she! It was damned human of you, and it was damned human of her; and don’t you forget it!”

Bicket swallowed violently again.

“It’s all very well,” he said, sullenly; “it ‘asn’t ‘appened to you.”

Michael was afflicted at once. No! It hadn’t happened to him! And all his doubts of Fleur in the days of Wilfrid came hitting him.

“Look here, Bicket,” he said, “do you doubt your wife’s affection? The whole thing is there. I’ve only seen her twice, but I don’t see how you can. If she weren’t fond of you, why should she want to go to Australia, when she knows she can make good money here, and enjoy herself if she wants? I can vouch for my friend Greene. He’s dashed decent, and I KNOW he’s played cricket.”

But, searching Bicket’s face, he wondered: Were all the others she had sat to as dashed decent?

“Look here, Bicket! We all get up against it sometimes; and that’s the test of us. You’ve just GOT to believe in her; there’s nothing else to it.”

“To myke a show of herself for all the world to see!” The words seemed to struggle from the skinny throat. “I saw that picture bought yesterday by a ruddy alderman.”

Michael could not conceal a grin at this description of ‘Old Forsyte.’

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “it was bought by my own father-inlaw as a present to us, to hang in our house. And, mind you, Bicket, it’s a fine thing.”

“Ah!” cried Bicket, “it IS a fine thing! Money! It’s money bought her. Money’ll buy anything. It’ll buy the ’eart out of your chest.”

And Michael thought: ‘I can’t get away with it a bit! What price emancipation? He’s never heard of the Greeks! And if he had, they’d seem to him a lot of loose-living foreigners. I must quit.’ And, suddenly, he saw tears come out of those shrimp’s eyes, and trickle down the hollowed cheeks.

Very disturbed, he said hastily:

“When you get out there, you’ll never think of it again. Hang it all, Bicket, be a man! She did it for the best. If I were you, I’d never let on to her that I knew. That’s what she’d do if I told her how you snooped those ‘Copper Coins.’”

Bicket clenched his fists—the action went curiously with the tears; then, without a word, he turned and shuffled out.

‘Well,’ thought Michael, ‘giving advice is clearly not my stunt! Poor little snipe!’

Chapter VI.

QUITTANCE 

Bicket stumbled, half-blind, along the Strand. Naturally good-tempered, such a nerve-storm made him feel ill, and bruised in the brain. Sunlight and motion slowly restored some power of thought. He had got the truth. But was it the whole and nothing but the truth? Could she have made all that money without—? If he could believe that, then, perhaps—out of this country where people could see her naked for a shilling—he might forget. But—all that money! And even if all earned ‘honourable,’ as Mr. Mont had put it, in how many days, exposed to the eyes of how many men? He groaned aloud in the street. The thought of going home to her—of a scene, of what he might learn if there WERE a scene, was just about unbearable. And yet—must do it, he supposed. He could have borne it better under St. Paul’s, standing in the gutter, offering his balloons. A man of leisure for the first time in his life, a blooming ‘alderman’ with nothing to do but step in and take a ticket to the ruddy butterflies! And he owed that leisure to what a man with nothing to take his thoughts off simply could not bear! He would rather have snaffled the money out of a shop till. Better that on his soul, than the jab of this dark fiendish sexual jealousy. ‘Be a man!’ Easy said! ‘Pull yourself together! She did it for you!’ He would a hundred times rather she had not. Blackfriars Bridge! A dive, and an end in the mud down there? But you had to rise three times; they would fish you out alive, and run you in for it—and nothing gained—not even the pleasure of thinking that Vic would see what she had done, when she came to identify the body. Dead was dead, anyway, and he would never know what she felt post-mortem! He trudged across the bridge, keeping his eyes before him. Little Ditch Street—how he used to scuttle down it, back to her, when she had pneumonia! Would he never feel like that again? He strode past the window, and went in.