He took up the Professor's letter once more. It was rather a good letter, ably setting out everything to be considered, the various interests that would be injured--relations, friends, the university, the little community of cultured persons who would be delivered up to coarse, commercial Thrigsby and its tongues. Clearly Smallman's dread was lest all these interests should be drawn down in the wreck of the young couple's marriage, and René could shudder and sympathize at the suffering and distress he might be causing. His resolution weakened a little until he thought of Linda, and then he said:
"But we are saving ourselves. The marriage goes to hell or we do. They can't have both."
Smallman's letter ended with a sentence worth the whole of the rest. It was as though he had written himself into something near imaginative perception and true friendship:
"But, my dear fellow, if you are resolved to continue in this blind and cruel folly, I can only pray and hope that the tragic trial it must be may make a man of you. Though you may be lost to us, I will pray, I believe in you enough to think, that you will not be altogether lost."
René tore up his first indignant note, and wrote another, saying how much he appreciated the friendship and affection, how it had become impossible to turn back, and how it pleased him to know that between himself and those who had been his friends there would be the separation of circumstance, not that of enmity and bitterness.
This done, he posted his reply and wired to his bank in Thrigsby to find out how much money he possessed.
He received the answer later when he was with Ann at tea: Fifty-five pounds.
"I spent very little," he explained, "and my wife had seven hundred a year."
"Seven hundred!" She was scared. "Seven hundred! And you chucked that to come and live in Mitcham Mews! Well, no wonder they say the world's going balmy."
She was both relieved and awed by his vast wealth, and allowed him to take her to a music-hall, where her pleasure brimmed over so that he could share it.
The fifty-five pounds changed her attitude toward him somewhat, made her more sure of him, relieved her, perhaps, of anxiety. She lost the nervous discomfort that had shown itself in deference toward him, and she could now consider him as a practical proposition and no longer as the delightful but alarming perplexity he had been. She had time to breathe, to let things go their own way, until it became necessary to do something. She asked him questions about his old life to discover any talent or capacity that might be turned to account.