In spite of himself, little flames ran over his belly as he heard her say it, and he dropped his head. Then he looked up at her again, with those haunted eyes.

“If it’s worth it to you,” he said. “I’ve got nothing.”

“You’ve got more than most men. Come, you know it,” she said.

“In one way, I know it.” He was silent for a time, thinking. Then he resumed: “They used to say I had too much of the woman in me. But it’s not that. I’m not a woman because I don’t want to shoot birds, neither because I don’t want to make money, or get on. I could have got on in the army, easily, but I didn’t like the army. Though I could manage the men all right: they liked me and they had a bit of a holy fear of me when I got mad. No, it was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead: absolutely fool-dead. I like men, and men like me. But I can’t stand the twaddling bossy impudence of the people who run this world. That’s why I can’t get on. I hate the impudence of money, and I hate the impudence of class. So in the world as it is, what have I to offer a woman?”