She poured him out a cup, while he got the toast from the fender to press some on her.  He began to recover his spirits; he talked, laughed, and rallied her on her depression.  She was not insensible to his change of mood.

When the tea was taken away, he pressed a cigarette on her against her will.

“You always get your own way,” she murmured, as he lit it for her.

“Now we’ll have a cosy little chat,” he said, as he wheeled her chair to the fire.  He brought his chair quite near to hers.

Mavis did not suffer quite so much.

“Now about this trouble,” he continued.  “Tell me all about it.”

She restated the subject of her last letter in as few words as possible.  When she had finished, he asked her a number of questions which betrayed a familiar knowledge of the physiology of her extremity.  She wondered where he could have gained his information, not without many jealous pangs at this suggestion of his having been equally intimate with others of her sex.

“Hang it all!  It’s not nearly so bad as it might be,” he said presently.

“What do you mean?”

“Why that, if every woman who got into the same scrape did nothing to help herself, the world would be over-populated in five minutes.”

Mavis sat bolt upright.  Her hands grasped the arms of her chair; her eyes stared straight before her.  There arose to her quick fancy the recollection of certain confidences of Miss Allen, which had hinted at hideous malpractices of the underworld of vice, affecting women in a similar condition to hers.

“Well?” said Perigal.

The sound of his voice recalled her to the present.

Mavis rose, placed a hand on each arm of Perigal’s chair, and leant over so as to look him full in the eyes, as she said icily: 

“Do you know what you are saying?”

“Eh!  Dear little Mavis.  You take everything so seriously,” he remarked, as he kissed her lightly on the cheek.

She sat back in her chair, uneasy, troubled:  vague, unwholesome, sordid shadows seemed to gather about her.

“Ever gone in for sea-fishing?” Perigal asked, after some minutes of silence.

“No.”

“I’m awfully keen.  I’m on it all day when the wind isn’t east.”

This enthusiasm for sea-fishing struck a further chill to Mavis’s forlorn heart.  She could not help thinking that, if he had been moved by a loving concern for her welfare, he would have devoted his days to the making of a competence on which they could live.

“Now about this trouble,” said Perigal, at which Mavis listened with all her ears.  He went on:  “I know, of course, the proper thing, the right thing to do is to marry you at once.”  Here he paused.

Mavis waited in suspense for him to go on; it seemed an epoch of time till he added: 

“But what are we going to live upon?”

She kept on repeating his words to herself.  She felt as if she were drowning in utter darkness.