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always bullied a man when they had him at a disadvantage. The thought of yesterday set his teeth on edge. To-day they would meet on equal terms, and he would try and remember that the situation was a horrible one for her. For himself it was very nearly intolerable. He hadn’t a job, and as far as he knew, he hadn’t a penny in the world. What was he to do? Live on Nesta—borrow from Nesta? The situation was not only nearly, but quite, intolerable.
    These thoughts went to and fro in his mind as they sat at breakfast in the small hot kitchen.
    Tom Williams bolted a couple of rashers, gulped down his tea, and was off, saying that he would be late. The chug-chug of his motor-cycle came back through the thin walls of the little house.
    It appeared that Tom has a partnership in a small garage. The car that had gone to Elston was out of stock. Tom was hoping to sell her to-day; there was a customer coming in at nine. That was why he was in such a hurry. Tom was a wonderful salesman.
    With recovered confidence Min began to tell him how wonderful Tom was at almost everything—“Why, he can cook as well as I can. And every bit of paper in this house is what he hung himself.” It was a great relief to have Min’s prattle to get them through the meal. She had shy smiles for him now and no longer kept her eye on the door. So much for a shave!
    When breakfast was over, he spoke to Nesta directly.
    â€œIs there somewhere where we can talk?”
    With no more than a nod she led the way into the parlour, with its saddle-back suite in bright shades of red and blue, its crimson Axminster square, and its silver photograph frames. There were three pink geraniums on the window-sill between blue plush curtains, and on the mantelpiece there was a green vase and a blue vase, and a pink and blue china clock supported on either side by a cherub with pink roses in its hair, and a pink ribbon round its waist. The fireplace was full of white shavings in imitation of the white shavings in Min’s mother’s parlour at Southsea, and the lace curtains which hung together inside the plush ones where also a pious copy. Presently there would be an aspidistra. Min was saving up for one. She had already saved enough out of her housekeeping money to buy a white woolly hearth-rug, and the aspidistra was to come next. The paper so fondly hung by Tom displayed a trellis covered with very large sweet peas in shades of sky-blue, lavender and grey. They crowded in upon the little room and narrowed it to the dimensions of one of those boxes with gay linings which are sold to hold sweets or fancy stationery.
    Into this room, so new, so garish, so commonplace, there came these two angry, incongruous people; and at once its slight emptiness became charged with strain, pressure, resistance.
    Nesta waited for him to begin. She stood with her back to the window, leaning forward over one of the red and blue chairs in a would-be easy attitude. He walked to the woolly mat, turned his back on the cherubs, and said what he had planned to say.
    â€œThis is a rotten deal for you. I want to tell you I’m awfully sorry about it.”
    Heavens! How incredibly difficult she made it! His words, his efforts to get her point of view, slipped back from the hard surface she turned towards him. It was like seeing a fly slip on a pane of glass. She was angry, hard, resentful, cold. But there was something else. He could feel the pressure of her will. Why should she be putting out her will against him like this? It got his back up. It made it too damned difficult to feel or say the decent thing. What was she to him after all, but a stranger whom he disliked? If she pressed him like this, he would let her see it. But of course he would try not to do that—only she was making it damned difficult.
    He said, “I really am sorry,” and the room filled again with her scornful silence.
    She stood there leaning over the back of the chair with bright