`I don't know how many pages.'
`Tell me one thing you read.'
She could not.
She never got beyond the second page. He read a great deal, and had a quick, active intelligence. She could understand nothing but love-making and chatter. He was accustomed to having all his thoughts sifted through his mother's mind; so, when he wanted companionship, and was asked in reply to be the billing and twittering lover, he hated his betrothed.
`You know, mother,' he said, when he was alone with her at night, `she's no idea of money, she's so wessel- brained. When she's paid, she'll suddenly buy such rot as marrons glacés, and then I have to buy her season-ticket, and her extras, even her underclothing. And she wants to get married, and I think myself we might as well get married next year. But at this rate--'
`A fine mess of a marriage it would be,' replied his mother. `I should consider it again, my boy.'
`Oh, well, I've gone too far to break off now,' he said, `and so I shall get married as soon as I can.'
`Very well, my boy. If you will, you will, and there's no stopping you; but I tell you, I can't sleep when I think about it.'
`Oh, she'll be all right, mother. We shall manage.'
`And she lets you buy her underclothing?' asked the mother.
`Well,' he began apologetically, `she didn't ask me; but one morning--and it was cold--I found her on the station shivering, not able to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up. She said: "I think so." So I said: "Have you got warm underthings on?" And she said, no, they were cotton. I asked her why on earth she hadn't got something thicker on in weather like that, and she said because she had nothing. And there she is--a bronchial subject! I had to take her and get some warm things. Well, mother, I shouldn't mind the money if we had any. And, you know, she ought to keep enough to pay for her season- ticket; but no, she comes to me about that, and I have to find the money.'
`It's a poor lookout,' said Mrs Morel bitterly.
He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly careless and laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair.
`But I can't give her up now; it's gone too far,' he said. `And, besides, for some things I couldn't do without her.'
`My boy, remember you're taking your life in your hands,' said Mrs Morel. `Nothing is as bad as a marriage that's a hopeless failure. Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought to teach you something; but it might have been worse by a long chalk.'
He leaned with his back against the side of the chimneypiece, his hands in his pockets. He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked as if he would go to the world's end if he wanted to. But she saw the despair on his face.
`I couldn't give her up now,' he said.
`Well,' she said, `remember there are worse wrongs than breaking off an engagement.'
`I can't give her up now,' he said.