“How was that?” asked Mavis, striving to escape from her distracting emotions by following what Perigal was saying.

“The man with the arrow-heads hired a chap with a gift of the gab to tell the others how wrong it was to want things someone else had collared.  That was the first lesson in morality, and the preacher, seeing there was money in the game, started the first priesthood.  Yes, morality owes its existence to the fact of the well-to-do requiring to be confirmed in their possessions without having to defend them by force.”

Mavis was now paying no attention to Perigal’s talk:  mind and heart were in Pennington Churchyard.  Perigal, thinking he was interesting Mavis, went on: 

“You mayn’t think it, but a bad egg like me does no end of a lot of good in the world, although downright criminals do more.  If it weren’t for people who interfered with others’ belongings, the race would get slack and deteriorate.  It’s having to look after one’s property which keeps people alert and up to the mark, and, therefore, those who’re the cause of this fitness have their uses.  No, my dear Mavis, evil is a necessary ingredient of the body politic, and if it were abolished to-morrow the race would go to ‘pot.’”

Perigal said more to the same effect.  Mavis was, presently, moved to remark: 

“You take the loss of the money you expected very calmly.”

“No wonder!”

“No wonder?” she queried, without expressing any surprise in her voice.

“To begin with, you have it.  Then I’ve seen you.”

Mavis thought for a moment before saying: 

“I suppose, as I’m another man’s wife, I ought to be angry at that remark.”

“Aren’t you?” he asked eagerly.

She did not reply directly; perhaps some recognition of the coldness with which she regarded him penetrated his understanding, for he added pleadingly: 

“Don’t say you don’t mind because you’re absolutely indifferent to me!”

“Why not?”

“Anything but that,” he said, while a distressed look crept into his eyes.  “But then, if you speak the truth, you couldn’t say that after all that has—­

“I’m going to speak the truth,” she interrupted.  “It doesn’t interest me to say anything else.”

“Well?” he exclaimed anxiously.

“I don’t in the least mind what you said.  And I’m not in the least offended, because, whatever you might ever say or do, it would never interest me.”

He stared at her helplessly for a few moments before saying: 

“Serve me jolly well right.”

Mavis did not say any more, at which Perigal got up to leave her.

“I’ve been a precious fool,” he muttered, after glancing at Mavis’s face before moving away.