Further, she would draw in the horns of her secret schemes of
expenditure. She would say that she had intended to do so-and-so and to
buy so-and-so, but that perhaps it would be better, in view of the
uncertainties of destiny, neither to do nor to buy so-and-so. In short,
she would succeed in conveying to him the idea that to live with him was
like being in an open boat with him adrift in the middle of the stormy
Atlantic. She loved to live with him, the compensations were exquisite,
and moreover what would be his fate if he were alone? Still, it was like
being in an open boat with him adrift in the middle of the stormy
Atlantic. And she would cling closer to him and point to the red sun
setting among black clouds of tempest. And this would continue until he
could throw say about a hundred and sixty thousand pounds into her lap,
whereupon she would calmly assert that in her opinion he and she had
really been safe all the while on the glassy lake of the Serpentine in a
steamer.

"I ought to have thought of all that before," he said to himself. "And
if I had I should have bought houses, something for her to look at and
touch. And even then she would have suggested that if I hadn't been a
coward I could have done better than houses. She would have found in
_The Times_ every day instances of companies paying twenty and thirty
per cent ... No! It would have been impossible for me to invest the
money without losing her esteem for me as a man of business. I wish to
heaven I hadn't got any money. So here goes!"

And he burst with assumed confidence into the bedroom. And
simultaneously, to intensify his unease, the notion that profiteering
was profiteering, whether in war or in peace, and the notion that F.F.
was a man of lofty altruistic ideals, surged through his distracted