“The moon’s rising:  it’s full tonight.  Think of me if you happen to be watching it,” he said.

“I shall be fast asleep.”

“And looking more charming than ever, if that be possible.  I shall be having a row with my father.”

“I daresay you can hold your own.”

“That’s what makes him so angry.”

Mrs. Farthing, upon opening the door, was surprised to see Mavis standing beside young Mr Perigal.

“I think you can get home safely now,” he remarked, as he raised his straw hat.

“Thanks for seeing me home.”

“Don’t forget your fish.  Good night.”

Mavis thought it well not to enter into any explanation of Perigal’s presence to her landlady.  She asked if supper were ready, to sit down to it directly she learned that it was.  But she did not eat; whether or not her two hours spent in Perigal’s company were responsible for the result, it did not alter the fact that her mind was distracted by tumult.  The divers perplexities and questionings that had troubled her with the oncoming of the year now assailed her with increased force.  She tried to repress them, but, finding the effort unavailing, attempted to fathom their significance, with the result of increasing her distress.  The only tangible fact she could seize from the welter in her mind was a sense of enforced isolation from the joys and sorrow of everyday humanity.  More than this she could not understand.

She picked her food, well knowing that, if she left it untouched, Mrs Farthing would associate her loss of appetite with the fact of her being seen in the company of a man, and would lead the landlady to make ridiculously sentimental deductions, which would be embarrassing to Mavis.

When she went upstairs, she did not undress.  She felt that it would be useless to seek sleep at present.  Instead, she stood by the open window of her room, and, after lighting a cigarette and blowing out the candle, looked out into the night.

It was just another such an evening that she had looked into the sky from the window of Mrs Ellis’ on the first day of her stay on Kiva Street.  Then, beyond sighing for the peace of the country, she had believed that she had only to secure a means of winning her daily bread in order to be happy.  Now, although she had obtained the two desires of her heart, she was not even content.  Perigal’s words awoke in her memory: 

“No sooner was a desire satisfied, than one was at once eager for something else.”

It would almost seem as if he had spoken the truth—­“almost,” because she was hard put to it to define what it was for which her being starved.

Mavis looked out of the window.  The moon had not yet emerged from a bank of clouds in the east; as if in honour of her coming, the edge of these sycophants was touched with silver light.  The stars were growing wan, as if sulkily retiring before the approach of an overwhelming resplendence.  Mavis’s cigarette went out, but she did not bother to relight it; she was wondering how she was to obtain the happiness for which her heart ached:  the problem was still complicated by the fact of her being ignorant in which direction lay the promised land.