A calm and disinterested observer would probably have been touched by this spectacle of impulsive womanly charity.  He might even have decided that it was one of the most beautifully human things that he had ever seen.  And the fact that the hardy heroes and Norsemen appeared scarcely to know what to do with the silver-wrapped bonbons would not have impaired his admiration for these two girlish figures of benevolence.  Denry, too, was touched by the spectacle, but in another way.  It was the rents of his clients that were being thus dissipated in a very luxury of needless benevolence.  He muttered: 

“Well, that’s a bit thick, that is!” But of course he could do nothing.

As the process continued, the clicking of the machine exacerbated his ears.

“Idiotic!” he muttered.

The final annoyance to him was that everybody except himself seemed to consider that Ruth was displaying singular ingenuity, originality, enterprise, and goodness of heart.

In that moment he saw clearly for the first time that the marriage between himself and Ruth had not been arranged in Heaven.  He admitted privately then that the saving of a young woman from violent death in a pantechnicon need not inevitably involve espousing her.  She was without doubt a marvellous creature, but it was as wise to dream of keeping a carriage and pair as to dream of keeping Ruth.  He grew suddenly cynical.  His age leaped to fifty or so, and the curve of his lips changed.

Ruth, spying around, saw him and ran to him with a glad cry.

“Here!” she said, “take these.  They’re no good.”  She held out her hands.

“What are they?” he asked.

“They’re the halfpennies.”

“So sorry!” he said, with an accent whose significance escaped her, and took the useless coins.

“We’ve exhausted all the chocolate,” said she.  “But there’s butterscotch left—­it’s nearly as good—­and gold-tipped cigarettes.  I daresay some of them would enjoy a smoke.  Have you got any more pennies?”

“No!” he replied.  “But I’ve got ten or a dozen half-crowns.  They’ll work the machine just as well, won’t they?”

This time she did notice a certain unusualness in the flavour of his accent.  And she hesitated.

“Don’t be silly!” she said.

“I’ll try not to be,” said Denry.  So far as he could remember, he had never used such a tone before.  Ruth swerved away to rejoin Nellie.

Denry surreptitiously counted the halfpennies.  There were eighteen.  She had fed those machines, then, with over a hundred and thirty pence.

He murmured, “Thick, thick!”

Considering that he had returned to Llandudno in the full intention of putting his foot down, of clearly conveying to Ruth that his conception of finance differed from hers, the second sojourn had commenced badly.  Still, he had promised to marry her, and he must marry her.  Better a lifetime of misery and insolvency than a failure to behave as a gentleman should.  Of course, if she chose to break it off....  But he must be minutely careful to do nothing which might lead to a breach.  Such was Denry’s code.  The walk home at midnight, amid the reverberations of the falling tempest, was marked by a slight pettishness on the part of Ruth, and by Denry’s polite taciturnity.