“Anyway, in a year you will be worth less,” I continued malignantly. “You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year later⁠—to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to a basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it would be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say⁠ ⁠… and caught a chill, or something or other. It’s not easy to get over an illness in your way of life. If you catch anything you may not get rid of it. And so you would die.”

“Oh, well, then I shall die,” she answered, quite vindictively, and she made a quick movement.

“But one is sorry.”

“Sorry for whom?”

“Sorry for life.” Silence.

“Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?”

“What’s that to you?”