Gammon began to understand what a mistake it
was to have brought Polly to a music-hall for the purpose of
breaking with her. Under cover of the languishing lyric Miss Sparkes
put her head nearer to him.
"What am I to do, eh?"
"To do?"
"I cawn't go on like this. Do you want me to get another job
somewhere? I sh'd think you might see I cawn't wear this jacket much
longer."
The crisis was dreadful. Gammon clutched at the only possible method
of appeasing his conscience, and postponing decisive words he took
Polly's hand--poorly gloved--and secretly pressed the palm with a
coin, which Polly in less than a clock-tick ascertained to be one
pound sterling. She smiled. "What's that for?"
"For--for the present."
And in this way another evening went by, leaving things as before.
"I'd never have believed I was such a fool," said Gammon to himself
at a late hour. He meant, of course, that experience was teaching
him for the first time the force of a moral obligation, which, as
theorist, he had always held mere matter for joke.
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