And then there's the application to be sent afterwards." "Still, it will be one of the two certainly ?" "Oh, yes.

I shall have to earn my living in future, you know; so, naturally, of course--" She gave her shoulder an eloquent upward movement, and let the rest go by default.
Cleek did not speak for a moment: merely walked on beside her--a ridge between his eyebrows and his lower lip sucked in; as if he were mentally debating upon something and was afraid he might speak incautiously.

But of a sudden: "Miss Lorne," he said, in a curiously tense voice, "may I ask you something?
Let us say that you had set your heart upon obtaining one or the other of these two positions--set it so entirely that life wouldn't be worth a straw to you if you didn't get it.

Let us say, too, that there was something you had done, something in your past which, if known, might utterly preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you wanted--it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the sake of argument.

We will say you had done your best to live down that offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely.