Things were bad in Fleet Street. Everyone said so, and therefore it followed that the statement was true. Certainly Jimmy found no reason to doubt it. His manuscripts came back with horrible regularity, not so much because they were unsuitable but because there was so little space and so many eager to fill it. Had he been more experienced he would have known that things are always bad to the majority, whilst the successful minority has no time to waste in telling others how it is getting on; but he was raw to the game, and not over-sanguine by nature, so instead of being elated by such little luck as he did get he was terribly discouraged when he counted up the total results of a month's hard work. He had just managed to scrape together the rent of the flat and the instalment on the hire-purchase furniture, but that had been all. There was nothing due to him from any of the papers; he was practically penniless, as well as a little in debt to such of the local tradesmen as would allow any credit. His own boots were growing uncomfortably thin, whilst, as for Lalage, he had not been able to buy her a single thing. Not that she asked him for anything, rather otherwise.

"I can manage," she said with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "These shoes will do me for some little time yet, as I hardly ever go out, and I know you'll get me lots of nice clothes when we grow rich."

But though she tried to encourage him she was not very successful. It is no easy task to put a new heart into someone else when there is a deadly fear gripping at your own, and as day after day went by and she saw him growing thinner, shabbier, more weary and despondent, her own hopes for the future dwindled down to the vanishing point. Hitherto he had kept away from his own people, none of whom had seen him since his return from Northampton; but they were always there in the background, and she knew that he had only to abandon her and come into line with their ideas to get his immediate needs supplied and some provision made for his future in the shape of a steady, respectable occupation. She believed in his ability as a writer far more than he did himself, but success meant months, even years, of waiting, and she saw that he had not the strength to wait. Already his nerve was going and he was trying to steady himself with whisky. Towards herself he was very loving and gentle, at least most of the time; but he was quickly becoming too worried to work in the flat. The sharp knock at the door which heralded the daily visit of one or other of their small creditors would put him off work for the rest of the day, and before long he took to spending the day at the club, sometimes writing, more often mooning about in the vague hope of meeting someone who could help him into a regular berth on one of the papers.

For Lalage these days passed with unutterable slowness. There was, of necessity, very little to do in the way of cooking, and she had not the heart to go out. It is miserable work looking into the shop windows whilst your own pockets are empty, and, moreover, she had long since divined the terrible jealousy of the past which was always at the back of Jimmy's mind, and she knew that he hated her to be out by herself, although, on the other hand, he seemed afraid to be seen out with her. It was the dread of meeting some of his own people, she understood that perfectly well, and the knowledge increased her fears for the future. In the end she was going to lose everything, not only Jimmy but her little home as well; and all because she had been insane enough to forget that love was not for such as herself, because she had been wilfully blind to the fact that Jimmy came from the Griersons, and must ultimately go back to the Griersons and their kind.

Now and then there was a red-letter day, when Dodgson of the Record wired for a special article, which probably meant two guineas on the morrow. On those occasions Lalage always went down to the office with Jimmy to hand in the copy because, as Jimmy declared, she was lucky to him, and, being elated by the commission, he was able to put on one side the fear of meeting anyone who knew him. But the next returned manuscript brought back his depression and sent him down to the club again to waste his time and drink whisky.

Lalage did not blame him for leaving her the task of meeting the little tradesmen, who grew foul-mouthed and truculent over an account of two or three shillings, as is their wont in that part of London. Rather, she sorrowed over the far smaller share of worry which did fall to him, and tried to take it all on to her own shoulders. He would leave her, she fully believed that, and, had she been as her kind is supposed to be, as perhaps it is, she would have hastened his going in order to be free again; but because she loved him she was ready to sacrifice anything to keep him as long as possible. For Jimmy's own sake, too, she dreaded his going back to his people, knowing, as she did, that he could never forget her, and that he would inevitably seek oblivion and find death in the bottle. She had divined his tendency that way from the very first, and the fear of it had never been out of her mind since.

Jimmy was still keeping up the nominal address at the house just off Baker Street, and so far Mrs. Fagin, the landlady, had treated him with fawning politeness when he paid his weekly rent, but from the very first he had distrusted her, and he always had the feeling that she would sell his secret if she discovered the market. Once Mrs. Marlow had called and had been told by the maid that Mr. Grierson was out for the day and his room was locked, but there was ever the chance that she might call again and disclose her identity to Mrs. Fagin. The whole thing was a nightmare to Jimmy, who sometimes found himself blaming Lalage in his heart for having suggested the arrangement. He was a supremely miserable man, at least when he was alone, fearful of his own people, terribly worried about money matters, jealous almost to the point of madness, and haunted by the dread of losing Lalage in the end. If only they could have faced the world openly half the battle would have been over, and they could, he told himself, have got through the rest somehow together. And yet since that one day of madness when he had made her promise to be his wife he had never referred to the subject again. He wanted her for his own, and yet he shrank from the sacrifice of marriage. He tried to quiet his conscience by telling himself it was wiser to wait, that it really made little difference after all; whilst Lalage said nothing, being already broken-hearted and bankrupt of hope.