GERALD. Well, I'm--well, I'll be--you managed it very sharp, didn't
you? I've only been away a fort-night.
ANABEL. Your father asked me--he offered me twelve pounds a month--
I wanted to do something.
GERALD. Oh yes, but you didn't hire yourself out at Lilley Close as
a sort of upper servant just for twelve pounds a month.
ANABEL. You're wrong--you're wrong. I'm not a sort of upper servant
at all--not at all.
GERALD. Oh, yes, you are, if you're paid twelve pounds a month--three
pounds a week. That's about what father's sick-nurse gets, I believe.
You don't do it for twelve pounds a month. You can make twelve pounds
in a day, if you like to work at your little models: I know you can
sell your statuette things as soon as you make them.
ANABEL. But I CAN'T make them. I CAN'T make them. I've lost the
spirit--the--_joi de vivre_--I don't know what, since I've been ill.
I tell you I've GOT to earn something.
GERALD. Nevertheless, you won't make me believe, Anabel, that you've
come and buried yourself in the provinces--SUCH provinces--just to
earn father's three pounds a week. Why don't you admit it, that you
came back to try and take up the old threads.
OLIVER. Why not, Gerald? Don't you think we ought to take up the
old threads?
GERALD. I don't think we ought to be left without choice. I don't
think Anabel ought to come back and thrust herself on me--for that's
what it amounts to, after all--when one remembers what's gone before.
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