that she was very intimate with him, and very dependent on him; and she
wished him to be always flamboyant, imposing, and successful.

'If you are at all hard up, Jack----' She made as if to reject the note.

'Oh! get out!' he laughed. 'It's not a tenner that I'm short of. I tell
you what you _can_ do,' he went on quickly and lightly. 'I was thinking
of raising a bit temporarily on this house. Five hundred, say. You
wouldn't mind, would you?'

The house was her own property, inherited from an aunt. John's
suggestion came as a shock to her. To mortgage her house: this was what
he wanted!

'Oh yes, certainly, if you like,' she acquiesced quietly. 'But I
thought--I thought business was so good just now, and----'

'So it is,' he stopped her with a hint of annoyance. 'I'm short of
capital. Always have been.'

'I see,' she said, not seeing. 'Well, do what you like.'

'Right, my girl. Now--roost!' He extinguished the gas over the
mantelpiece.

The familiar vulgarity of some of his phrases always vexed her, and
'roost' was one of these phrases. In a flash he fell from a creature
engagingly masculine to the use-worn daily sharer of her monotonous
existence.