Here he pointed to the crowded graves.

“I’m going home,” declared Mavis.

“May I come as far as your door?”

“Aren’t you ashamed of being seen with me?”

“I’m very, very proud, little Mavis, and, if only my circumstances were different, I should say much more to you.”

His vehemence surprised Mavis into silence; it also awoke a strange joy in her heart; she seemed to walk on air as they went towards her lodging.

“What are you thinking of?” he asked presently.

“You.”

“Really?”

“I was wondering why you went out of your way to give people a bad opinion of you.”

“I wasn’t aware I was especially anxious to do that.”

“You don’t go to church.”

“Are you like that?”

“Not particularly; but other people are, and that’s what they say.”

“Church is too amusing nowadays.”

“I’m afraid my sense of humour isn’t sufficiently developed.”

“It’s the parsons I’m thinking of.  Once upon a time, when people went in for deadly sins, it gave ’em something to preach about.  Now we all lead proper, discreet lives, they have to justify their existence by inventing tiny sins for their present congregations.”

“What sins?” asked Mavis.

“Sins of omission:  any trifles they can think of that a more robust race of soul-savers would have laughed at.  No.  It’s the parsons who empty the churches.”

“I don’t like you to talk like that.”

“Why?  Are you that way?”

“Sometimes more than others.”

“I congratulate you.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“I mean it,” he went on.  “People are much the happier for believing.  The great art of life is to be happy, and, if one is, nothing else matters.”

“Then why don’t you believe?”

“Supposing one can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“It isn’t given to everyone, you know.”

“Then you think we’re just like poor animals—­”

“Don’t say ‘poor’ animals,” he interrupted.  “They’re ever so much happier than we.”

“Nonsense!  They don’t know.”

“To be ignorant is to be happy.  When will you understand that?”

“Never.”

“I know what you’re thinking of—­all the so-called mental development of mankind—­love, memory, imagination, sympathy—­all the finer susceptibilities of our nature.  Is it that what you were thinking of?”

“Vaguely.  But I couldn’t find the words so nicely as you do.”

“Perhaps I read ’em and got ’em by heart.  But don’t you see that all the fine things I mentioned have to be paid for by increased liability to mental distress, to forms of pain to which coarse natures are, happily, strangers?”

“You talk like an unpleasant book,” she laughed.

“And you look like a radiant picture,” he retorted.

“Ssh!  Here we are.”