"Don't you think he may have more energy than you imagine?"

"It's possible. I have sometimes wondered."

"What sort of life does he lead? Has he many friends I mean?"

"Very few. I should doubt whether there's anyone he talks with as he
does with me. He'll never get much good out of his money; but if he
fell into real poverty--poverty like mine--it would kill him. I
know he looks at me as an astonishing creature, and marvels that I
don't buy a good dose of chloral and have done with it."

Eve did not join in his laugh.

"I can't bear to hear you speak of your poverty," she said in an
undertone. "You remind me that I am the cause of it."

"Good Heavens! As if I should mention it if I were capable of such a
thought!"

"But it's the fact," she persisted, with something like irritation.
"But for me, you would have gone into the architect's office with
enough to live upon comfortably for a time."

"That's altogether unlikely," Hilliard declared. "But for you, it's
improbable that I should have gone to Birching's at all. At this
moment I should be spending my money in idleness, and, in the end,
should have gone back to what I did before. You have given me a
start in a new life."