Leonard Merrick

“ It was in May that they parted; they parted on the day of her owning that she cared for him. The virtue was hers, not his; yet because he loved her, and realised that she was too good a woman to defy her conscience and be happy, he acquiesced in her decision—refrained from pleading to her, refrained from trying to see her again.
His only indulgence was to send violets to her home in Paris for the ninth of December; the ninth of December was her birthday, and violets, she had once told him, were her favourite flower. ”

“ I get a guinea a week, but—— Oh, why should I bore you with all that?"
"You don't 'bore' me, Lucy."
"Well, I—I prefer to do it. You don't know everything; his people have never forgiven his marriage—they think marriage has handicapped him so badly—and, you may be sure, they blame me more than him; it's always the daughter-in-law's fault! ”

“ One has to live."
"Yes. ... Still, isn't it a pity to—to——"
"Oh, one gets tired!" he said. "Ideals make lonely dwelling-places. ... Let me take you somewhere and give you some tea."
"I ought to go to some shops; I'm up West to work."
"‘Work'? Spending money?"
"Earning it—I'm doing fashion articles."
"You? Do you mean it? Well, come and have some tea first."
It was very early, and there were vacant tables in the alcoves. As he sat opposite her, Orlebar thought what a fraud it was that the things one craved for only came to pass when one had grown resigned to doing without them. ”

“ Socially? It would injure him financially, too; he recognised it for the first time as he surveyed the room. There was McKinnell, of the Mayfair, ragging a waiter because the toast was cold; Orlebar's new novel was to run through the Mayfair before it came out in book form. If he knew anything of McKinnell, that highly respectable gentleman would refuse to pollute the pages of his journal with the fiction of a co-respondent. And McKinnell's refusal wouldn't be singular, though he might express it with singular offensiveness. ”

“ So it had grown to be his custom to send violets to her for her birthday, though what was once an impulse of devotion was now a lie—the weakness of a sentimentalist reluctant to wound a woman, and his self-esteem, by admitting that he had exaggerated the importance of his feelings. ”

“ And now he had kissed her for the first time—as a duty. That abandonment of despair had played havoc with him, yet he wished that it had lasted—it would have been worth while, he thought. God! the ecstasy that would have been thrilling in him now if he had suffered like that until this afternoon!
At the Club he ordered a "big whisky and a small soda."
"You're off to Rome soon, aren't you?" said a man presently. "You pampered novelists have all the luck!"
"Yes," said Orlebar. The man was the Editor of a daily paper ”