There was a new look in her face, a look of decision.

She was more or less a coward but she felt no fear.

She even leaned a little towards him and looked him in the face.
"It means," she pronounced slowly, "exactly what it seems to mean." The words conveyed horrible things to him, but he was speechless.

He could only wait.
"You and I, Philip," she continued, "have been--well, I suppose we should call it engaged--for three years.

During those three years I have earned, by disgusting and wearisome labour, just enough to keep me alive in a world which has had nothing to offer me but ugliness and discomfort and misery.