“Even when you tell me so,” she insisted, “I cannot believe it.”

He drew his chair closer to hers.  He looked around him nervously, the horror was in his eyes.

“Since I saw you last,” he continued, “I have been very nearly like it.  I couldn’t travel alone, I bought silly comic papers, I played nap with young men who talked of nothing but their ‘shop’ and their young ladies.  I have been to a public-house, drunk beer, and shaken hands with the barmaid.  I was even disappointed when one of them—­a creature with false hair, a loud, rasping voice and painted lips—­was not there.  Just in time I took one of my beans and became myself again, but Edith, I have only two more.  When they are gone there is an end of me.  That is why I sit here by your side at this moment and feel myself a condemned man.  I think that when I feel the change coming I shall throw myself over into the river.  I could not bear the other life again!”

“Absurd!” she declared.

“If I believed,” he went on, “that I could carry with me across that curious boundary enough of decency, enough of my present feelings, to keep us wholly apart, I would be happier.  It is one of the terrors of my worst moments when I think that in the months or years to come I may again be tempted—­no, not I, but Alfred Burton of Garden Green may be tempted—­to look once more across the hedge for you.”

She smiled reassuringly at him.

“You do not terrify me in the least.  I shall ask you in to tea.”

He groaned.

“My speech will be Cockney and my manners a little forward,” he said, in a tone of misery.  “If I see your piano I shall want to vamp.”

“I think,” she murmured, “that for the sake of the Alfred Burton who is sitting by my side to-night, I shall still be kind to you.  Perhaps you will not need my sympathy, though.  Perhaps you will adapt yourself wholly to your new life when the time comes.”

He shook his head.

“There are cells in one’s memory,” he muttered.  “I don’t understand—­I don’t know how they get there—­but don’t you remember that time last summer when I was picnicking with my common friends?  We were drinking beer out of a stone jug, we were singing vulgar songs, we were revelling in the silly puerilities of a bank holiday out of doors.  And I saw your face and something came to me.  I saw for a moment over the wall.  Dear, I am very sure that if I go back there will be times when I shall see over the wall, and my heart will ache and the whole taste of life will be like dust between my teeth.”

She leaned towards him.

“It is your fault if I say this,” she whispered.  “It is you yourself who have prepared the way.  Why not make sure of riches?  The world can give so much to the rich.  You can buy education, manners, taste.  Anything, surely, would be better than taking up the life of an auctioneer’s clerk once more?  With riches you can at least get away from the most oppressive forms of vulgarity.”