...whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one's friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one's own conscience… - Stella Gibbons

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style.

Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.

By god, D. H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage?