"Nonsense!" he commented. "I've been out in the world and have seen what goes on," retorted Mavis. "It isn't my experience." "Men are always in the right. No coffee, thank you." "Sure?" "Quite." "No; it is not my experience," he went on. "Take the case of all the chaps I know who've married women who played up to them. Without exception they curse in their hearts the day they met them." "If anything's wrong, it's owing to the husband's selfishness." "Little Mavis--I'm going to call you that--you don't know what rot you're talking." "Rot is often the inconvenient common sense of other people," commented Mavis. "It isn't as if marriage were for a day," he went on, "or for a week, or two years. Then, it wouldn't matter very much whom one married. But it's for a lifetime, whether it turns out all right or whether it don't. What?" "I see; you'd have men choose wives as you would a house or an umbrella," she suggested. "People would be a jolly sight happier if they did," he replied, to add, after looking intently at Mavis: "Though, after all, I believe I'm talking rot. When one's love time comes, nothing else in the world matters; every other consideration goes phut, as it should." "Goes what?" "Goes to blazes, then, as it should." "As it should," echoed Mavis. "Dear little Mavis!" smiled Windebank, "But it's big Mavis now." He called the waiter, to give him a note with which to pay the bill. "What wicked waste!" remarked Mavis in an undertone. "When it's been time spent with you?" When the bill and the change were brought, Windebank would not look at either. "How can you be so extravagant?" she murmured. "When one's with you, it's a crime to think of anything else." "What a good thing I'm leaving you!" she laughed. He insisted on getting and helping her into her coat. As she put her arms into the sleeves, he murmured: "Where did you get your hair?" "Do try and talk sense," she pleaded, not insensible to the man's ardent admiration. Then, with something like a sigh, she left the warmth and comfort of the restaurant for the bleakness of the street, on which a thick fog had descended. This enveloped the man and the woman. As they stood on the pavement, it seemed to cut them off from the rest of the world. CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE SEQUEL "Will you let me drive you home?" "No, thank you." "Then you must let me walk with you." "There's no necessity." "I insist. London, at this time of night, isn't the place for a plain little girl like Mavis." "Now you're talking sense." "I wish I thought it," he remarked bitterly. He paid the cabman and piloted Mavis through the fog to the other side of Regent Street; they then made for Piccadilly. "Am I going right?" he asked. "At present," she replied, to ask, after a moment or two, "Why are you so extravagant?" "I'm not." "That supper and keeping that cab waiting! It must have run into pounds." "Eh! What if it did?"