“Rot!”

“What do you mean?”

“I can tell you after all that” (here he caught Mavis’s eye)—­“after we’ve been such friends—­as far as I’m concerned, my marriage has been a ghastly failure.”

“You mustn’t tell me that,” declared Mavis, to whom the news brought a secret joy.

“I can surely tell you after—­after we’ve been such dear friends.  But we don’t hit it off at all.  I can’t stick Vic at any price.”

“Nonsense!  She’s pretty and charming.  Everyone who knows her says the same.”

“When they first know her; then they think no end of a lot of her; but after a time everyone’s ‘off’ her, although they haven’t spotted the reason.”

“Have you?”

“Unfortunately, that’s been my privilege.  Vic has enough imagination to tell her to do the right thing and all that; but otherwise, she’s utterly, constitutionally cold.”

“Nonsense!  She must have sympathy to ‘do the right thing,’ as you call it.”

“Not necessarily.  Hers comes from the imagination, as I told you; but her graceful tact chills one in no time.  I might as well have married an icicle.”

“I’m sorry,” remarked Mavis, saying what was untrue.

“And then Vic has a conventional mind:  it annoys me awfully.  Conventions are the cosmetics of morality.”

“Where did you read that?”

“And these conventions, that are the rudiments of what were once full-blooded necessities, are most practised by those who have the least call for their protection.  Pity me.”

“I do.”

Perigal’s eyes brightened.

“I’m unhappy too,” said Mavis, after a pause.

“Not really?”

“I wondered if you would help me.”

“Try me.”

Perigal’s eyes glittered, a manifestation which Mavis noticed.

“You know how you used to laugh at my belief in Providence.”

“Is that how you want me to help?”

“If you will.”

Perigal’s face fell.

“Fire away,” he said, as he lit a cigarette.

Mavis told him something of her perplexities.

“I want to see things clearly.  I want to find out exactly where I am.  Everything’s so confusing and contradictory.  I shan’t be really happy till I know what I really and truly believe.”

“How can I help you?  You have to believe what you do believe.”

“But why do I believe what I do believe?”

“Because you can’t help yourself.  Your present condition of mind is the result of all you have experienced in your existence acting upon the peculiar kind of intelligence with which your parents started you in life.  Take my advice, don’t worry about these things.  If you look them squarely in the face, you only come to brutal conclusions.  Life’s a beastly struggle to live, and then, when subsistence is secured, to be happy.  It’s nature’s doing; it sees to it that we’re always sharpening our weapons.”